Just a little reminder that getting rid of individual pieces of scum does nothing to destroy the pond which produces the scum

The Dispensable Man

By Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson
Friday, September 30, 2005; A19



Back when clouds began to gather around Tom DeLay, a White House source warned that the loss of "The Hammer" would be catastrophic. "It would be complete and total chaos," the source explained. "The House would descend into 'Lord of the Flies.' "

That's possible, but not likely, as the quick replacement of DeLay by his erstwhile sidekick, Roy Blunt, suggests. Commentators love personalities, especially ones as colorful as Tom DeLay's. But politics is also about building organizations, institutions and networks. And over the past 15 years, the Republicans have worked at the grass-roots and national levels to recruit and fund ultraconservative candidates and shift the electoral playing field in their favor. In Washington they have sought to build strong alliances with moneyed interests and perfect techniques to shield their most vulnerable members from public backlash -- all with remarkable success.

DeLay is one of the most important architects of this new power structure, but he's not essential to its continuance. Grover Norquist -- head of the conservative group Americans for Tax Reform and another key GOP power broker -- recently joked that if a bus ran him over, someone else could easily step into his place and assume his role and relationships. Some might see this as false modesty, but Norquist is right.

The same conclusion applies to DeLay. His role is crucial not because of who he is but because of where he sits -- at the intersection of money, organization and influence. What Tom DeLay does is vital. Tom DeLay himself is not.

Indeed, the GOP majority has repeatedly moved quickly -- once it decided to move -- to throw a discredited leader overboard and replace him with the person best placed to play the same part. DeLay joins the ranks of Gingrich, Armey, Lott and Livingston -- leaders who have capsized without causing more than a ripple. Despite speculation that the GOP is splitting between "moderates" and "hard conservatives," House Republicans are likely to coalesce rapidly around the new leadership.

After all, the defining characteristic of the House GOP since 1994 has been its coordination. Defying all precedent in modern American politics, Republicans have operated as a near-parliamentary party. They have given the leadership enormous control over the legislative agenda, over the party's message, over committee assignments, and over the crafting of legislation.

This has been possible in large part because hard-core conservatives constitute the overwhelming majority of the Republican Party in the House. But it's also been possible because the system has delivered. The GOP's electoral margins have been razor thin, but coordination has enabled Republicans to consolidate power and patronage, to pursue an extremely conservative agenda with surprising (though not unlimited) success, and to protect loyal members.

The examples are endless, but two suggest the whole. The Republican leaders play a game called "catch and release," in which they allow moderate Republicans to vote against conservative GOP legislation, thereby burnishing their reputations for "independence" -- but only once it's clear that the leadership has a majority. Along with their Senate compatriots, House leaders have also perfected their use of conference committees (which are supposed to "merge" House and Senate bills) to shift legislation to the right and then slam it through Congress on an up-or-down vote.

Like DeLay, Blunt has been a major player in a key part of this new regime: the aggressive effort of GOP leaders to induce powerful private interests to work with and through them. In tandem with the White House, the leadership has encouraged major elements of the Republican coalition -- both politicians and organized interests -- to act as a team. Cooperation with the leadership is the price of access.

Not all of these efforts have been successful, but they've increased the willingness of key groups to cooperate with the GOP, which has enhanced the ability of Republican leaders to deliver the goods.

This edifice of power looks more vulnerable today than at any time in the past decade. But the House Republican leadership won't go down without a fight. Roy Blunt is a product and an experienced practitioner of contemporary GOP politics, and his rise to power promises more of the same. House Republicans may be ready to dump their beloved dance partner, but they aren't likely to change their steps.

Jacob S. Hacker, a fellow at the New America Foundation, is an associate professor of political science at Yale University. Paul Pierson is a professor of political science at the University of California at Berkeley. They are the authors of "Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy."


© 2005 The Washington Post Company

I'm shocked...

You are an Atheist

When it comes to religion, you're a non-believer (simple as that). You prefer to think about what's known and proven. You don't need religion to solve life's problems. Instead, you tend to work things out with logic and philosophy.

What's Your Religious Philosophy?

Slow Friday...

This one seems pretty dead on

You scored as Existentialist. Existentialism emphasizes human capability. There is no greater power interfering with life and thus it is up to us to make things happen. Sometimes considered a negative and depressing world view, your optimism towards human accomplishment is immense. Mankind is condemned to be free and must accept the responsibility. Existentialist 94% Materialist 81% Modernist 75% Postmodernist 38% Cultural Creative 25% Idealist 6% Romanticist 0% Fundamentalist 0% What is Your World View? (updated) created with QuizFarm.com

Now this one I saw coming....

What Classic Movie Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

I'm a laid back guy who faces assissination...................hey the dudes in Easy Rider were killed also. I'm not sure I like this trend...................

Looks like I found out how I'm gonna die......didn't see that coming

What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

Love those personality tests....................

One Indictment down...........hopefull much more to come

DeLay Indicted in Campaign Finance ProbeRep. Roy Blunt Selected to Fill Majority Leader Role on Temporary Basis

By William Branigin, Amy Goldstein and R. Jeffrey SmithWashington Post Staff WritersWednesday, September 28, 2005; 4:30 PM

A Texas grand jury today indicted Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) on a criminal count of conspiring with two political associates to violate state campaign finance law, and DeLay announced he was temporarily stepping down as House majority leader.
DeLay later denounced the charge against him as "reckless," and he acerbically blasted the Democratic district attorney prosecuting the case as "an unabashed partisan zealot" seeking revenge for Democratic political defeats in Texas.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), emerging from a meeting with House GOP leaders, announced that Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), the Republican whip, was elected to assume DeLay's role as majority leader on a temporary basis. Hastert also said some duties would be transferred to Rep. David Dreier (R-Calif.), the Rules Committee chairman, and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the deputy whip.

The indictment was disclosed in Travis County, Tex., on the last day of a grand jury investigating a campaign financing scheme involving allegedly illegal use of corporate funds.
DeLay, 58, attended a meeting in Hastert's office shortly after receiving word of the indictment and said afterward he notified Hastert that he would "temporarily step aside" as majority leader. GOP House rules require that any member of Congress who is indicted must step down from a leadership position. However, there is no requirement that DeLay leave his congressional seat.

"In accordance with the rules of the House Republican Conference, I will temporarily step aside as floor leader in order to win exoneration from these baseless charges," DeLay told reporters.

"This morning, in an act of blatant political partisanship, a rogue district attorney in Travis County, Texas, named Ronnie Earle charged me with one count of criminal conspiracy: a reckless charge wholly unsupported by the facts," DeLay said, reading from a prepared statement. "This is one of the weakest, most baseless indictments in American history. It's a sham and Mr. Earle knows it."

He went on to call Earle a "partisan fanatic" who was conducting a "vengeful investigation" as part of a "coordinated, premeditated campaign of political retribution."

DeLay said, "I have done nothing wrong. I have violated no law, no regulation, no rule of the House. I have done nothing unlawful, unethical or, I might add, unprecedented. . . . My defense in this case will not be technical or legalistic; it will be categorical and absolute. I am innocent. Mr. Earle and his staff know it. And I will prove it." DeLay did not answer questions at the end of his six-minute statement.

Earle, speaking to reporters earlier in Austin, refused to comment on criticism by DeLay's representatives or to go into details about the evidence against the congressman.

"Our job is to prosecute abuses of power," Earle said.
Hastert said after the vote on DeLay's temporary successor that "he will fight this, and we will give him our utmost support." He said the House has important work to do, necessitating a replacement for DeLay.

Blunt, the GOP whip in the House, said DeLay was targeted "largely because of his effectiveness" as majority leader. "I will act as temporary leader, and Tom will come back as leader" after he is exonerated, Blunt said. He called the indictment "terribly unfair."

The indictment accuses DeLay of criminally conspiring to inject illegal corporate contributions into 2002 state elections that helped the Republican Party reorder the congressional map in Texas and cement its control of the House of Representatives in Washington.

The four-page indictment alleged for the first time that DeLay himself participated in a conspiracy with others to funnel corporate money into the 2002 state election "with the intent that a felony be committed."

In the indictment, DeLay is accused of conspiring with two associates: John D. Colyandro, the former executive director of a political action committee in Texas that was formed by DeLay, and James W. Ellis, the head of DeLay's national political committee. Colyandro and Ellis had previously been charged in an indictment that did not name DeLay.

DeLay helped organize the Texas election fundraising effort at the core of today's indictment, Texans for a Republican Majority. The committee itself was indicted on Sept. 8 for accepting illegal corporate funds. Eight corporations and an industry lobbying group have also been indicted during the 34-month probe.

The indictment charges that DeLay entered "into an agreement" with Colyandro and Ellis to circumvent the state's ban on corporate contributions by arranging for the donations to be sent first to an arm of the Republican National Committee in Washington, and then back to Republican candidates in Texas named on a written list prepared in Texas.
According to the indictment, DeLay, Colyandro and Ellis conspired to make a political contribution in violation of the Texas Election Code for the benefit of candidates for the Texas House of Representatives. Colyandro formerly directed the Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee, known as TRMPAC.

"This is a political vendetta," said Kevin Madden, a spokesman for DeLay. "They could not get Tom DeLay at the polls," he said, apparently referring to the powerful Republican leader's political enemies. "Now they're trying to get him in court."
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said today that President Bush still views DeLay as a "good ally" and "a leader we have worked closely with to get things done for the American people." McClellan added, "The president's view is that we need to let the legal process work."

In the House, Rep. Kenny Marchant, a freshman Republican from Dallas, said, "I'm very disappointed in the indictments," Washington Post staff writer Charles Babington reported. Marchant told reporters the charges were partisan and expressed confidence that DeLay would be fully cleared.
Asked what steps the party would take, he said, "We're all waiting for something from the speaker." He said he had no comment on whether the indictment would harm the Republican Party.

A lawyer for DeLay, Bill White, denounced the charge against his client as a "skunky indictment" that "stinks to high heaven."

Earle, the district attorney, refused to comment on White's characterization of the indictment or to provide any details of the case against DeLay.

He did not reply directly when asked if he had sought money-laundering charges against DeLay, saying only that "the grand jury returned indictments that the grand jury felt were appropriate."

"The investigation is continuing," he said. Although the grand jury that returned the indictments leaves office today, he said, it was "entirely possible" that a new grand jury would take up the matter.

The conspiracy charge against DeLay carries a potential penalty of six months to two years in state prison and a fine of up to $100,000. DeLay, unlike the two others named in the indictment Wednesday, was not charged with money-laundering, an offense that can bring a 10-year prison term.
One of the other alleged conspirators, Ellis, is still a director of DeLay's principal fundraising committee, Americans for a Republican Majority, which provided the seed money for the Texas offshoot in 2001. The other, Colyandro, is a veteran of White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove's former direct-mail firm.

The facts of the central transactions at issue in the case -- the transfer to Washington in September 2002 of $190,000 in corporate funds collected by the committee in Texas and the subsequent donation of those funds to seven Texas House candidates on Oct. 4, 2002 -- have never been at issue. A copy of the relevant check has long been in the prosecutor's hands.
DeLay, an 11-term congressman from the Houston area, was elected majority whip in 1994 and became House majority leader in November 2002. His tough tactics in keeping his party in line and opponents at bay have earned him the nickname, "The Hammer."

With DeLay under fire for three admonishments by the House ethics committee on separate issues, and amid concerns about the grand jury investigation in Texas, House Republicans changed a rule in November 2004 so that DeLay could keep his leadership post in the event he were indicted. But intense criticism forced House Republicans to scuttle the change two months later.

Ellis, Colyandro and another DeLay associate and fundraiser, Warren RoBold, were originally indicted in September 2004 on charges involving the alleged illegal use of corporate funds to aid GOP candidates for the Texas state legislature in the 2002 elections.

Two weeks ago, the grand jury in Travis County issued an expanded indictment against Colyandro and Ellis that included new charges of criminal conspiracy, as well as felony charges of violating Texas election law.

Under Texas law, corporate contributions cannot legally be used to campaign politically for the election or defeat of state legislative candidates.

The fundraising activities behind the case were aimed at achieving the key DeLay goal of assuring Republican control of the Texas legislature, enabling the body to redraw the state's 32 U.S. House districts in a way likely to secure more victories by GOP congressional candidates and an expanded House majority for the party.

That goal was achieved after the Texas legislature redrew the boundaries in a controversial redistricting in 2003, leading to the defeat of several Democratic House incumbents in the November 2004 elections.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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No Monkey to Man Business

Intimidation Alleged On 'Intelligent Design'Teacher Cites School Board Pressure

By Michael PowellWashington Post Staff WriterWednesday, September 28, 2005; A03

HARRISBURG, Pa., Sept. 27 -- Parents in federal court Tuesday described an atmosphere of intimidation and anger when school board members in Dover, Pa., last year decided to require high school biology teachers to read a statement that casts doubt on the theory of evolution.

Bryan Rehm, a parent who also taught physics at Dover High School, testified of continual pressure from board members not to "teach monkeys-to-man evolution." He said that the board required teachers to watch a film critical of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and that board members talked openly of teaching creationism alongside evolution.

The atmosphere became so heated that neighbors began to call him an "atheist with . . . a lot of words added on to it," Rehm said. He said that "it was turning into a real zoo" and that students were quarreling about evolution.

Rehm is one of 11 people from Dover, a small town south of Harrisburg, who want to block their school board from requiring the reading of that four-paragraph statement that criticizes evolutionary theory. The statement notes that "intelligent design" offers an alternative theory for the origin and evolution of life -- namely, that life in all of its complexity could not have arisen without the help of an intelligent hand.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are representing the parents, along with lawyers from Pepper Hamilton LLP.

Advocates of intelligent design, who include a small band of scientists and philosophers, are silent on whether that intelligent hand belongs to God or perhaps some other being.

"It will be clear that this isn't about religion," said Allan Bonsell, 45, a school board member who has attended the opening two days of the trial. "We're not teaching intelligent design. We're making the kids aware of it."

Sworn testimony as well as two newspaper accounts note that Bonsell and other board members dismissed the separation of church and state as a myth, and initially favored equally teaching creationism and evolution. Bonsell and the board members have denied making these statements or have said they were misquoted. The board meetings were taped, but the tapes apparently were destroyed.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones directed reporters with two local newspapers, the York Dispatch and the York Daily Record, to testify about what was said in open meetings. The two reporters have declined, citing reportorial privilege, and could face penalties including jail time on Wednesday.

The board's lawyers have framed the case as one of free inquiry. They note that college classes -- including those taught by a key witness for the plaintiffs -- often make students aware of intelligent design, if only to dismiss it. Why, they ask, shouldn't the same hold for high school?

"Compromises have been made -- this is not being taught in class," said Richard Thompson, whose Thomas More Law Center represents the board. "We don't advocate teaching intelligent design at this point."

Rehm had a different bottom line. Intelligent design, he said, is inherently religious -- a view shared by many scientists. And, he added: "Nine board members without degrees in science should not be dictating science curriculum."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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This shit just gets crazier and crazier

3 Charged in Killing Of Fla. BusinessmanBoulis Slain After 2000 Abramoff Deal

By Susan Schmidt and James V. GrimaldiWashington Post Staff WritersWednesday, September 28, 2005; A03

Fort Lauderdale police said yesterday that they charged three men in the 2001 gangland-style slaying of a Florida businessman who was gunned down in his car months after selling a casino cruise line to a group that included Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis was killed on a Fort Lauderdale street on Feb. 6, 2001. Two of the three men charged had been hired as consultants by Adam Kidan, one of Abramoff's partners in the SunCruz Casinos venture.

Anthony Moscatiello, 67, identified by authorities as a former bookkeeper for the Gambino crime family, was arrested Monday night in Queens, N.Y. Anthony Ferrari, 48, was arrested in Miami Beach. Both were charged with murder, conspiracy and solicitation to commit murder. James Fiorillo, 28, was arrested in Palm Coast, Fla., yesterday and charged with murder and conspiracy.

Boulis, millionaire founder of the Miami Subs sandwich chain, sold SunCruz to Abramoff and Kidan in September 2000, at a time when Abramoff was one of Washington's most powerful lobbyists. Abramoff and Kidan were indicted last month on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy in connection with a $60 million loan they obtained to purchase the casino company.
Abramoff is at the center of a federal investigation into lobbying for Indian tribes and influence-peddling in Washington. Abramoff used contacts with GOP Reps. Tom DeLay (Tex.) and Robert W. Ney (Ohio) and their staffs as he worked to land the SunCruz deal, interviews and court records show.

The indictment in the Boulis slaying remained under seal yesterday, and authorities declined to disclose details of the charges against the defendants. Michael D. Becker, a Miami lawyer who has represented the men in other matters, said yesterday that he has not spoken to them yet.

Attorneys for Kidan and Abramoff said their clients have no knowledge about who killed Boulis. The two men were on a business trip abroad the night Boulis was shot. "Adam has cooperated with police right from the beginning. He's never been told he is a subject or a target," said Kidan's attorney, Martin Jaffe.

Fort Lauderdale police say they have long been interested in interviewing Abramoff, but he has repeatedly begged off, citing scheduling difficulties. Abramoff's attorney, Neal Sonnett, said after the fraud indictment that his client knows nothing about the slaying but would be willing to meet with detectives. He said he had no comment on the murder charges.

Abramoff and Kidan have been friends since their days as College Republicans in Washington. Kidan, of New York, owned the Dial-a-Mattress franchise in the District until it filed for bankruptcy in the 1990s. Their third partner in the SunCruz deal was Reagan administration official Ben Waldman.

Dealings between Boulis and the Abramoff group were often tense. At key points in the negotiations, Ney placed comments in the Congressional Record -- first sharply criticizing Boulis and later praising the new ownership under Kidan. Ney later said he had been unaware of Kidan's background.
Also during the negotiations, Abramoff brought a lender he was trying to impress to hobnob with DeLay in Abramoff's FedEx Field skybox at a Redskins-Cowboys game. DeLay has said he does not remember meeting the lender.

After the sale, the friction led to a December 2000 fistfight between Kidan and Boulis, who had remained as a minority partner. Kidan told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that Boulis had said, "I'm not going to sue you, I'm going to kill you." Kidan said that SunCruz thereafter barred Boulis from its casino boats.

Homicide detectives have been investigating payments made to Moscatiello, his daughter and Ferrari in the months before the killing. SunCruz paid $145,000 to Moscatiello and his daughter for catering, consulting and "site inspections," Kidan said in a 2001 civil court deposition.

There is no evidence that food or drink was provided or that any consulting documents were prepared, according to court documents. The checks to Jennifer Moscatiello were made at Anthony Moscatiello's instruction, although his daughter provided no services for the money, Kidan said in his deposition.

Moscatiello was indicted on federal heroin-trafficking charges in 1983 along with Gene Gotti, brother of John Gotti, then head of the Gambino family. Gene Gotti and several others were sent to prison, but the charges against Moscatiello were later dropped.

Kidan met Moscatiello in 1990 while he was running New York City's Best Bagels in the Hamptons and Moscatiello was running a catering hall. Moscatiello provided Kidan advice on running the business. Kidan said in a deposition that he was unaware of Moscatiello's 1983 indictment or his affiliations with the Gottis.

SunCruz also paid a company called Moon Over Miami Beach Inc. $95,000 for surveillance services in 2001. Ferrari is a principal in Moon Over Miami Beach. Ferrari and several associates also reportedly received $10,000 in SunCruz casino chips.

Kidan has denied that the SunCruz payments to Moscatiello and Ferrari had anything to do with the slaying. In 2001, he told the Miami Herald: "If I'm going to pay to have Gus killed, am I going to be writing checks to the killers? I don't think so. Why would I leave a paper trail?"

Abramoff and Kidan were indicted last month by a federal grand jury in Fort Lauderdale on five counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy relating to their $147.5 million SunCruz purchase. Prosecutors alleged that Abramoff and Kidan faked a wire transfer of $23 million -- the down payment they had agreed to put into the deal for the day-cruise casino boats.

In civil filings in the bankruptcy of SunCruz, Abramoff blamed Kidan for defrauding lenders. Kidan has said the lenders were aware that the buyers were not actually putting up the $23 million in cash for the purchase. Their trial is scheduled for Jan. 9.

© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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Dylan & Scorcese

'No Direction': Scorsese Points The Way to Dylan

By Ann HornadayWashington Post Staff WriterMonday, September 26, 2005; C01

"No Direction Home" represents a great musical-cinematic summit, as no less than the great Martin Scorsese directs -- with superb control and judgment -- what surely qualifies as the definitive documentary about Bob Dylan. "No Direction Home" will be broadcast in two parts tonight and tomorrow night on PBS's "American Masters" series, and in the bargain viewers get two masters -- one a hugely influential singer and songwriter with a canny, thoroughly American knack for self-invention and the other a filmmaker with a thumb (to recycle an encomium Dylan has dodged throughout his career) firmly on the pulse of his generation.

It's a happy collaboration. "No Direction Home" offers a lively, absorbing, often deeply moving account of how Robert Zimmerman from the small mining town of Hibbing, Minn., became -- through talent, luck and calculating ambition -- the musician, icon and enigma we know as Bob Dylan. Wisely, Scorsese limits his scope to the early years, from Dylan's birth in 1941 to 1966, when he outraged fans and folk purists by going electric. The result isn't a comprehensive compendium of factoids or deep dish -- there's precious little personal information related in the 207-minute running time -- but instead a tightly focused portrait of a young artist searching for his musical and professional identity and whose search happened to bring him to the very center of the American political and cultural zeitgeist.

Most of the facts of Zimmerman's journey to Dylan are well known by now, thanks to endless hagiographic deconstructions of his life and to his own well-regarded autobiography, which came out last year. So Scorsese -- who long ago earned his rock-doc bona fides with "The Last Waltz," about the Band -- wisely structures "No Direction Home" around a central tension, in this case the startlingly hostile reception Dylan received when he toured with the Band (then called the Hawks) in Britain in 1966. When those concerts were released in 1998 as part of Dylan's ongoing "Bootleg" recording series, fans heard the famous "Judas!" episode, when a fan yelled the epithet at Dylan and the appalled singer responded with, "I don't believe you!" then ripped into a blistering version of "Like a Rolling Stone."

That song, with fans booing all the way through, opens "No Direction Home," and Scorsese returns to those contentious concerts throughout the film. They not only provide much-needed narrative tension but the ideal leitmotif for an artist who for so long has engaged in an ambivalent gavotte with his fans, as interested in courting them as he is in confounding them. "No Direction Home" gets to the heart of that ambivalence, with Dylan -- a famous trickster who began to mythologize his past almost as soon as he got to Greenwich Village in 1961 -- at least appearing to provide some straight answers to what has driven him all these years. Scorsese also interviews Dylan's longtime friends, collaborators and mentors, among them Dave Van Ronk, Liam Clancy, Maria Muldaur and Joan Baez, who recounts her personal and professional power struggles with Dylan with tart, candid affection. (One question: Where's Robbie Robertson?)

Dylan has been the subject of documentaries before, most famously in D.A. Pennebaker's 1967 "Don't Look Back." Scorsese avails himself of clips from that film, as well as Pennebaker's rarely seen "Eat the Document" and Murray Lerner's "Festival," about the Newport Folk Festival (there's footage of Dylan's notorious first electric set at the 1965 festival, but none of the legendary and probably apocryphal fistfight between folklorist Alan Lomax and Dylan manager Albert Grossman). Perhaps only a director of Scorsese's caliber could have produced not just a fascinating portrait of Dylan's meteoric rise but a vivid social history and an obliquely witty examination of the packaging and marketing of the folk craze in the 1960s (some scenes seem plucked directly from Christopher Guest's satire "A Mighty Wind"). It should be noted that the director, with editor David Tedeschi, accomplishes all of this without the crutch of narration; the only time you hear a voice-over is when Scorsese reads a speech that Dylan wrote but never delivered when he received an award from the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee in 1963.

But the most valuable material, by far, is that of Dylan's less publicized influences -- not only Woody Guthrie but Odetta, Leadbelly, Webb Pierce and John Jacob Niles -- as well as early scenes, such as a 1963 performance of "Man of Constant Sorrow," in which an impossibly green kid from Hibbing seems literally to be finding his voice and the persona that would undergo so many transformations in successive years. Then there are the occasional grace notes, such as a goosebump-inducing duet with Johnny Cash on "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry."

Throughout "No Direction Home," Dylan emerges as a cultural magpie -- he calls himself "a musical expeditionary" -- who is constantly reaching back into the canon even while he reinvents it, and his own songs, again and again. During one of several painful encounters with a clueless 1960s press corps, Dylan -- by then a reluctant mascot for the antiwar and civil rights movements -- is asked whether he considers himself the voice of his generation. "I think of myself as a song-and-dance man," he says simply. Gracefully interweaving Dylan's artistry and ambition, "No Direction Home" puts him in his rightful place, not only alongside America's greatest poets and visionaries but also its showmen; he's an heir to Guthrie and Jack Kerouac, it's true, but there's a playful tip of the hat as well to such archetypal entertainers as Stephen Foster, George M. Cohan and P.T. Barnum.

"No Direction Home" ends on an electrifying note, literally and figuratively, as viewers see for the first time on-screen the famous Judas performance; the moment -- defiant, thrilling and deeply emotional -- is a triumphant conclusion to a story that, gratifyingly, hasn't ended. In a postscript, Scorsese informs viewers that after his motorcycle accident in the summer of 1966, Dylan stopped touring for eight years. What the filmmaker might have added is that then, he never stopped.

No Direction Home airs at 9 p.m. on Channel 26 (90 minutes tonight; two hours tomorrow night) and on Maryland Public Television (two hours each night).

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

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The more things change, the more they stay the same

Evolution Debate Heads to Pa. Court
By MARTHA RAFFAELEThe Associated PressMonday, September 26, 2005; 4:29 AM

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Eighty years after the Scopes Monkey Trial, the latest legal chapter in the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools is to unfold in federal court.

The Dover Area School District on Monday was to start defending its policy of requiring ninth-grade students hear about "intelligent design" before biology lessons on evolution.

Dover is believed to be the first school system in the nation to require students be exposed to the concept under a policy adopted by a 6-3 vote in October 2004.

Intelligent design, a concept some scholars have advanced over the past 15 years, holds that Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection cannot fully explain the origin of life or the emergence of highly complex life forms. It implies that life on Earth was the product of an unidentified intelligent force.
Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism _ a literal reading of the Bible's story of creation _ camouflaged in scientific language, and it does not belong in a science curriculum. Eight Dover families are suing the school district, alleging that the policy violates the constitutional separation of church and state.

"The intelligent-design movement is an effort to introduce creationism into the schools under a different name," said Eric Rothschild, a Philadelphia attorney representing the families.

The history of evolution litigation dates back to the famous 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, in which Tennessee biology teacher John T. Scopes was fined $100 for violating a state law that forbade teaching evolution. The Tennessee Supreme Court reversed his conviction on the narrow ground that only a jury trial could impose a fine exceeding $50, and the law was repealed in 1967.
In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an Arkansas state law banning the teaching of evolution. And in 1987, it ruled that states may not require public schools to balance evolution lessons by teaching creationism.

The clash over intelligent-design is evident far beyond this rural district of about 3,500 students 20 miles south of Harrisburg. President Bush has weighed in, saying schools should present both concepts when teaching about the origins of life.

In August, the Kansas Board of Education gave preliminary approval to science standards that allow intelligent design-style alternatives to be discussed alongside evolution.

Richard Thompson, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Law Center, which lobbies for the religious freedom of Christians and is defending the school district, said Dover's policy takes a modest approach.

It requires teachers to read a statement that says intelligent design differs from Darwin's view and refers students to an intelligent-design textbook, "Of Pandas and People," for more information.

"All the Dover school board did was allow students to get a glimpse of a controversy that is really boiling over in the scientific community," Thompson said.

The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that represents many scholars who support intelligent design, opposes mandating it in public schools. Nevertheless, it considers the Dover lawsuit an attempt to squelch voluntary debates over evolution.

"It's Scopes in reverse. They're going to get a gag order to be placed on teachers across the country," said institute senior fellow John West.
Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, which supports the teaching of evolution in public schools, said the controversy has little to do with science because mainstream scientists have rejected intelligent-design theory.

Intelligent design supporters "seem to have shifted virtually entirely to political and rhetorical efforts to sway the general public," Scott said. "The bitter truth is that there is no argument going on in the scientific community about whether evolution took place."

Who needs experience, when you can get the job by simply following orders and ignoring evidence....

More important to appoint loyalists to Bush then loyalists to America.........

How Many More Mike Browns are out There?A TIME inquiry finds that at top positions in some vital government agencies, the Bush Administration is putting connections before experience

By KAREN TUMULTY, MARK THOMPSON AND MIKE ALLEN I WASHINGTON

In Presidential politics, the victor always gets the spoils, and chief among them is the vast warren of offices that make up the federal bureaucracy. Historically, the U.S. public has never paid much attention to the people the President chooses to sit behind those thousands of desks. A benign cronyism is more or less presumed, with old friends and big donors getting comfortable positions and impressive titles, and with few real consequences for the nation. But then came Michael Brown. When President Bush's former point man on disasters was discovered to have more expertise about the rules of Arabian horse competition than about the management of a catastrophe, it was a reminder that the competence of government officials who are not household names can have a life or death impact. The Brown debacle has raised pointed questions about whether political connections, not qualifications, have helped an unusually high number of Bush appointees land vitally important jobs in the Federal Government.

The Bush Administration didn't invent cronyism; John F. Kennedy turned the Justice Department over to his brother, while Bill Clinton gave his most ambitious domestic policy initiative to his wife. Jimmy Carter made his old friend Bert Lance his budget director, only to see him hauled in front of the Senate to answer questions on his past banking practices in Georgia, and George H.W. Bush deposited so many friends at the Commerce Department that the agency was known internally as "Bush Gardens." The difference is that this Bush Administration had a plan from day one for remaking the bureaucracy, and has done so with greater success.

As far back as the Florida recount, soon-to-be Vice President Dick Cheney was poring over organizational charts of the government with an eye toward stocking it with people sympathetic to the incoming Administration. Clay Johnson III, Bush's former Yale roommate and the Administration's chief architect of personnel, recalls preparing for the inner circle's first trip from Austin, Texas, to Washington: "We were standing there getting ready to get on a plane, looking at each other like: Can you believe what we're getting ready to do?" The Office of Personnel Management's Plum Book, published at the start of each presidential Administration, shows that there are more than 3,000 positions a President can fill without consideration for civil service rules. And Bush has gone further than most Presidents to put political stalwarts in some of the most important government jobs you've never heard of, and to give them genuine power over the bureaucracy. "These folks are really good at using the instruments of government to promote the President's political agenda," says Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University and a well-known expert on the machinery of government. "And I think that takes you well into the gray zone where few Presidents have dared to go in the past. It's the coordination and centralization that's important here."

The White House makes no apologies for organizing government in a way that makes it easier to carry out Bush's agenda. Johnson says the centralization is "very intentional, and it starts with the people you pick ... They're there to implement the President's priorities." Johnson asserts that appointees are chosen on merit, with political credentials used only as a tie breaker between qualified people. "Everybody knows somebody," he says. "Were they appointed because they knew somebody? No. What we focused on is: Does the government work, and can it be caused to work better and more responsibly? ... We want the programs to work." But across the government, some experienced civil servants say they are being shut out of the decision making at their agencies. "It depresses people, right down to the level of a clerk-typist," says Leo Bosner, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA's) largest union. "The senior to mid-level managers have really been pushed into a corner career-wise."

Some of the appointments are raising serious concerns in the agencies themselves and on Capitol Hill about the competence and independence of agencies that the country relies on to keep us safe, healthy and secure. Internal e-mail messages obtained by Time show that scientists' drug-safety decisions at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are being second-guessed by a 33-year-old doctor turned stock picker. At the Office of Management and Budget, an ex-lobbyist with minimal purchasing experience oversaw $300 billion in spending, until his arrest last week. At the Department of Homeland Security, an agency the Administration initially resisted, a well-connected White House aide with minimal experience is poised to take over what many consider the single most crucial post in ensuring that terrorists do not enter the country again. And who is acting as watchdog at every federal agency? A corps of inspectors general who may be increasingly chosen more for their political credentials than their investigative ones.

Nowhere in the federal bureaucracy is it more important to insulate government experts from the influences of politics and special interests than at the Food and Drug Administration, the agency charged with assuring the safety of everything from new vaccines and dietary supplements to animal feed and hair dye. That is why many within the department, as well as in the broader scientific community, were startled when, in July, Scott Gottlieb was named deputy commissioner for medical and scientific affairs, one of three deputies in the agency's second-ranked post at FDA.

His official FDA biography notes that Gottlieb, 33, who got his medical degree at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, did a previous stint providing policy advice at the agency, as well as at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. What the bio omits is that his most recent job was as editor of a popular Wall Street newsletter, the Forbes/Gottlieb Medical Technology Investor, in which he offered such tips as "Three Biotech Stocks to Buy Now." In declaring Gottlieb a "noted authority" who had written more than 300 policy and medical articles, the biography neglects the fact that many of those articles criticized the FDA for being too slow to approve new drugs and too quick to issue warning letters when it suspects ones already on the market might be unsafe. FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford, who resigned suddenly and without explanation last Friday, wrote in response to e-mailed questions that Gottlieb is "talented and smart, and I am delighted to have been able to recruit him back to the agency to help me fulfill our public-health goals." But others, including Jimmy Carter-era FDA Commissioner Donald Kennedy, a former Stanford University president and now executive editor-in-chief of the journal Science, say Gottlieb breaks the mold of appointees at that level who are generally career FDA scientists or experts well known in their field. "The appointment comes out of nowhere. I've never seen anything like that," says Kennedy.

Gottlieb's financial ties to the drug industry were at one time quite extensive. Upon taking his new job, he recused himself for up to a year from any deliberations involving nine companies that are regulated by the FDA and "where a reasonable person would question my impartiality in the matter." Among them are Eli Lilly, Roche and Proctor & Gamble, according to his Aug. 5 "Disqualification Statement Regarding Former Clients," a copy of which was obtained by Time. Gottlieb, though, insists that his role at the agency is limited to shaping broad policies, such as improving communication between the FDA, doctors and patients, and developing a strategy for dealing with pandemics of such diseases as flu, West Nile virus and sars. Would he ever be involved in determining whether an individual drug should be on the market? "Of course not," Gottlieb told Time. "Not only wouldn't I be involved in that ... But I would not be in a situation where I would be adjudicating the scientific or medical expertise of the (FDA) on a review matter. That's not my role. It's not my expertise. We defer to the career staff to make scientific and medical decisions."
Behind the scenes, however, Gottlieb has shown an interest in precisely those kinds of deliberations. One instance took place on Sept. 15, when the FDA decided to stop the trial of a drug for multiple sclerosis during which three people had developed an unusual disorder in which their bodies eliminated their blood platelets and one died of intracerebral bleeding as a result. In an e-mail obtained by Time, Gottlieb speculated that the complication might have been the result of the disease and not the drug. "Just seems like an overreaction to place a clinical hold" on the trial, he wrote. An FDA scientist rejected his analysis and replied that the complication "seems very clearly a drug-related event." Two days prior, when word broke that the FDA had sent a "non-approvable" letter to Pfizer Inc., formally rejecting its Oporia drug for osteoporosis, senior officials at the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research received copies of an e-mail from Gottlieb expressing his surprise that what he thought would be a routine approval had been turned down. Gottlieb asked for an explanation.

Gottlieb defends his e-mails, which were circulated widely at the FDA. "Part of my job is to ask questions both so I understand how the agency works, and how it reaches its decisions," he told Time. However, a scientist at the agency said they "really confirmed people's worst fears that he was only going to be happy if we were acting in a way that would make the pharmaceutical industry happy." The Oporia decision gave Pfizer plenty of reason to be unhappy: the drug had been expected to produce $1 billion a year in sales for the company. Pfizer's stock fell 1.4% the day the rejection was announced. The FDA has not revealed why it rejected the drug, and Pfizer has said it is "considering various courses of action" that might resuscitate its application for approval. Health experts note that Gottlieb's appointment comes at a time of increased tension between the agency and drug companies, which are concerned that new drugs will have a more difficult time making it onto the market in the wake of the type of safety problems that persuaded Merck to pull its best-selling painkiller Vioxx from the market last year. The agency's independence has also come under question, most recently with its decision last month to prevent the emergency contraceptive known as Plan B from being sold over the counter, after an FDA advisory panel recommended it could be. That Gottlieb sits at the second tier of the agency, critics say, sends anything but a reassuring signal.

David Safavian didn't have much hands-on experience in government contracting when the Bush Administration tapped him in 2003 to be its chief procurement officer. A law-school internship helping the Pentagon buy helicopters was about the extent of it. Yet as administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, Safavian, 38, was placed in charge of the $300 billion the government spends each year on everything from paper clips to nuclear submarines, as well as the $62 billion already earmarked for Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts. It was his job to ensure that the government got the most for its money and that competition for federal contracts—among companies as well as between government workers and private contractors—was fair. It was his job until he resigned on Sept. 16 and was subsequently arrested and charged with lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with the Federal Government.
Safavian spent the bulk of his pregovernment career as a lobbyist, and his nomination to a top oversight position stunned the tightly knit federal procurement community. A dozen procurement experts interviewed by Time said he was the most unqualified person to hold the job since its creation in 1974. Most of those who held the post before Safavian were well-versed in the arcane world of federal contracts. "Safavian is a good example of a person who had great party credentials but no substantive credentials," says Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit Washington watchdog group. "It's one of the most powerful positions in terms of impacting what the government does, and the kind of job—like FEMA director—that needs to be filled by a professional." Nevertheless, Safavian's April 2004 confirmation hearing before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee (attended by only five of the panel's 17 members) lasted just 67 minutes, and not a single question was asked about his qualifications.
The committee did hold up Safavian's confirmation for a year, in part because of concerns about work his lobbying firm, Janus-Merritt Strategies, had done that he was required to divulge to the panel but failed to. The firm's filings showed that it represented two men suspected of links to terrorism (Safavian said one of the men was "erroneously listed," and the other's omission was an "inadvertent error") as well as two suspect African regimes. Ultimately, the committee and the full Senate unanimously approved Safavian for the post.
His political clout, federal procurement experts say privately, came from his late-1990s lobbying partnership with Grover Norquist, now head of Americans for Tax Reform and a close ally of the Bush Administration. Norquist is an antitax advocate who once famously declared that his goal was to shrink the Federal Government so he could "drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." As the U.S. procurement czar, Safavian was pushing in that direction by seeking to shift government work to private contractors, contending it was cheaper. Federal procurement insiders say his relationship with Norquist gave Safavian the edge in snaring the procurement post. But Norquist has "no memory" of urging the Administration to put Safavian in the post, says an associate speaking on Norquist's behalf. A White House official said Norquist "didn't influence the decision." Clay Johnson, who was designated by the White House to answer all of Time's questions about administration staffing issues and who oversaw the procurement post, says Safavian was "by far the most qualified person" for the job. Perhaps it also didn't hurt that Safavian's wife Jennifer works as a lawyer for the House Government Reform Committee, which oversees federal contracting.

In addition, Safavian had worked at a law firm in the mid-'90s with Jack Abramoff, one of the capital's highest-paid lobbyists, a top g.o.p. fund raiser and a close friend of House majority leader Tom DeLay. Abramoff was indicted last month on unrelated fraud and conspiracy charges. In 2002, Abramoff invited Safavian on a weeklong golf outing to Scotland's famed St. Andrews course (as Abramoff had done with DeLay in 2000). Seven months after the trip, an anonymous call to a government hotline said lobbyists had picked up the tab for the jaunt. That wasn't true; Safavian paid $3,100 for the trip. But the government alleges that he lied when he repeatedly told investigators that Abramoff had no business dealings with the General Services Administration, where Safavian worked at the time.

Prosecutors alleged last week, however, that Safavian worked closely with Abramoff—identified only as "Lobbyist A" in the criminal complaint against Safavian—to give Abramoff an inside track in his efforts to acquire control of two pieces of federal property in the Washington area. Safavian, who is free without bail, declined to be interviewed for this story. His attorney, Barbara Van Gelder, said the government is trying to pressure her client to help in its probe of Abramoff. "This is a creative use of the criminal code to secure his cooperation," she said.

Three days after the sept. 12 resignation of FEMA's Michael Brown, Julie Myers, the Bush Administration's nominee to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ice) came before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The session did not go well. "I think we ought to have a meeting with (Homeland Security Secretary) Mike Chertoff," Ohio Republican George Voinovich told Myers. "I'd really like to have him spend some time with us, telling us personally why he thinks you're qualified for the job. Because based on the resume, I don't think you are."
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is one of 22 agencies operating under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security, but its function goes to the heart of why the department was created: to prevent terrorists from slipping into the U.S. If that weren't enough, the head of ice must also contend with money launderers, drug smugglers, illegal-arms merchants and the vast responsibility that comes with managing 20,000 government employees and a $4 billion budget. Expectations were high that whoever was appointed to fill the job would be, in the words of Michael Greenberger, head of the University of Maryland's Center for Health and Homeland Security, "a very high-powered, well-recognized intelligence manager."

Instead the Administration nominated Myers, 36, currently a special assistant handling personnel issues for Bush. She has experience in law-enforcement management, including jobs in the White House and the Commerce, Justice and Treasury departments, but she barely meets the five-year minimum required by law. Her most significant responsibility has been as Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement at the Commerce Department, where, she told Senators, she supervised 170 employees and a $25 million budget.
Myers may appear short on qualifications, but she has plenty of connections. She worked briefly for Chertoff as his chief of staff at the Justice Department's criminal division, and two days after her hearing, she married Chertoff's current chief of staff, John Wood. Her uncle is Air Force General Richard Myers, the outgoing Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Julie Myers was on her honeymoon last week and was unavailable to comment on the questions about her qualifications raised by the Senate. A representative referred Time to people who had worked with her, one of whom was Stuart Levey, the Treasury Department's Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Crime. "She was great, and she impressed everyone around her in all these jobs," he said. "She's very efficient, and she's assertive and strong and smart, and I think she's wonderful."

To critics, Myers' appointment is a symptom of deeper ills in the Homeland Security Department, a huge new bureaucracy that the Bush Administration resisted creating. Among those problems, they say, is a tendency on the part of the Administration's political appointees to discard in-house expertise, particularly when it could lead to additional government regulation of industry. For instance, when Congress passed the intelligence reform bill last year, it gave the Transportation Security Administration (tsa) a deadline of April 1, 2005, to come up with plans to assess the threat to various forms of shipping and transportation—including rail, mass transit, highways and pipelines—and make specific proposals for strengthening security. Two former high-ranking Homeland Security officials tell Time that the plans were nearly complete and had been put into thick binders in early April for final review when Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson abruptly reassigned that responsibility to the agency's policy shop. Jackson was worried that presenting Congress with such detailed proposals would only invite it to return later and demand to know why Homeland Security had not carried them out. "If we put this out there, this is what we're going to be held to," says one of the two officials, characterizing Jackson's stance. Nearly six months after Congress's deadline, in the wake of the summer's subway bombings in London, tsa spokeswoman Amy Von Walter says the agency is in the process of declassifying the document and expects to post a short summary on its website soon.

In the meantime, Myers' nomination could be in trouble. Voinovich says his concerns were satisfied after a 35-minute call with Chertoff, in which the Homeland Security Secretary argued forcefully on Myers' behalf. But other senators are raising questions, and Democrats have seized on Myers' appointment as an example of the Bush Administration's preference for political allies over experience.

The post-watergate law creating the position of inspector general (IG) states that the federal watchdogs must be hired "without regard to political affiliation," on the basis of their ability in such disciplines as accounting, auditing and investigating. It may not sound like the most exciting job, but the 57 inspectors general in the Federal Government can be the last line of defense against fraud and abuse. Because their primary duty is to ask nosy questions, their independence is crucial.

But critics say some of the Bush IGs have been too cozy with the Administration. "The IGs have become more political over the years, and it seems to have accelerated," said A. Ernest Fitzgerald, who has been battling the Defense Department since his 1969 discovery of $2 billion in cost overruns on a cargo plane, and who, at 79, still works as a civilian Air Force manager. A study by Representative Henry Waxman of California, the top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, found that more than 60% of the IGs nominated by the Bush Administration had political experience and less than 20% had auditing experience—almost the obverse of those measures during the Clinton Administration. About half the current IGs are holdovers from Clinton.
Johnson says political connections may be a thumb on the scale between two candidates with equal credentials, but rarely are they the overriding factor in a personnel decision. Speaking of all such appointments, not just the IGs, he said, "I am aware of one or two situations where politics carried the day and the person was not in the job a year later."

Still, several of the President's IGs fit comfortably into the friends-and-family category. Until recently, the most famous Bush inspector general was Janet Rehnquist, a daughter of the late Chief Justice. Rehnquist had been a lawyer for the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and worked in the counsel's office during George H.W. Bush's presidency before becoming an IG at the Department of Health and Human Services. In that sense, she was qualified for the job. But a scathing report by the Government Accountability Office asserted that she had "created the perception that she lacked appropriate independence in certain situations" and had "compromised her ability to serve as an effective leader." Rehnquist also faced questions about travel that included sightseeing and free time, her decision to delay an audit of the Florida pension system at the request of the President's brother, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, and the unauthorized gun she kept in her office. She resigned in June 2003 ahead of the report.

Three weeks ago, however, Joseph Schmitz supplanted Rehnquist as the most notorious Bush IG. Schmitz, who worked as an aide to former Reagan Administration Attorney General Ed Meese and whose father John was a Republican Congressman from Orange County, Calif., quit his post at the Pentagon following complaints from Senate Finance Committee chairman Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa. In particular, Grassley questioned Schmitz's acceptance of a trip to South Korea, paid for in part by a former lobbying client, according to Senate staff members and public lobbying records, and Schmitz's use of eight tickets to a Washington Nationals baseball game. But those issues aren't the ones that led to questions about his independence from the White House. Those concerns came to light after Schmitz chose to show the White House his department's final report on a multiyear investigation into the Air Force's plan to lease air-refueling tankers from Boeing for much more than it would have cost to buy them. After two weeks of talks with the Administration, Schmitz agreed to black out the names of senior White House officials who appeared to have played a role in pushing and approving what turned out to be a controversial procurement arrangement. Schmitz ultimately sent the report to Capitol Hill, but Senators are irked that they have not yet received an original, unredacted copy. Congressional aides said they are still scratching their heads about how Schmitz got his job. He now works for the parent company of Blackwater USA, a military contractor that, in his old job, he might have been responsible for investigating.

—With reporting by Massimo Calabresi

They built a museum, so it must be true

In Evolution Debate, Creationists Are Breaking New GroundMuseum Dedicated to Biblical Interpretation Of the World Is Being Built Near Cincinnati

By Michael PowellWashington Post Staff WriterSunday, September 25, 2005; A03

PETERSBURG, Ky. -- The guide, a soft-spoken fellow with a scholarly aspect, walks through the halls of this handsome, half-finished museum and points to the sculpture of a young velociraptor.

"We're placing this one in the hall that explains the post-Flood world," explains the guide. "When dinosaurs lived with man."

A reporter has a question or two about this dinosaur-man business, but Mark Looy -- the guide and a vice president at the museum -- already has walked over to the lifelike head of a T. rex, with its three-inch teeth and carnivore's grin.
"We call him our 'missionary lizard,' " Looy says. "When people realize the T. rex lived in Eden, it will lead us to a discussion of the gospel. The T. rex once was a vegetarian, too."

The nation's largest museum devoted to the alternative reality that is biblical creation science is rising just outside Cincinnati. Set amid a park and three-acre artificial lake, the 50,000-square-foot museum features animatronic dinosaurs, state-of-the-art models and graphics, and a half-dozen staff scientists. It holds that the world and the universe are but 6,000 years old and that baby dinosaurs rode in Noah's ark.

The $25 million Creation Museum stands much of modern science on its head and might cause a paleontologist or three to rend their garments. But officials expect to attract hundreds of thousands of visitors when the museum opens in early 2007.

"Evolutionary Darwinists need to understand we are taking the dinosaurs back," says Kenneth Ham, president of Answers in Genesis-USA, which is building the museum. "This is a battle cry to recognize the science in the revealed truth of God."

"Intelligent design," the theory that the machinery of life is so complex as to require the hand -- subtle or not -- of an intelligent creator, has stolen the media thunder of late. This week a trial will begin in federal court in Pennsylvania, in which 11 parents accuse the Dover school board of violating the separation of church and state by requiring high school biology teachers to read a statement in class that intelligent design is an alternative explanation of life's origins.

Most scientists dismiss intelligent design as flawed science, and they fear cultural conservatives intend it as a religious wedge. The small band of scientists who promote intelligent design retort that theirs is a scientific inquiry, albeit with theistic implications.

But by any measure, Young Earth Creationism -- which holds that the Bible is the literal word of God and that He created the universe in seven days-- has a more powerful hold on the beliefs of Americans than evolutionary theory or intelligent design. That grip grows stronger by the year.

Polls taken last year showed that 45 percent of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form 10,000 years ago (or less) and that man shares no common ancestor with the ape. Only 26 percent believe in the central tenet of evolution, that all life descended from a single ancestor.
Another poll showed that 65 percent of Americans want creationism taught alongside evolution.

In the early 20th century, many creationist thinkers viewed Genesis as metaphorical, accepting that Earth formed over hundreds of thousands, even millions of years. But as society became more secular, and science offered an implicit challenge to fundamentalist beliefs, creationist leaders took a more literal line.

"The creationists have been very successful in persuading conservative Christians to abandon any nonliteral interpretation of the Bible," said Ronald L. Numbers, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and author of "The Creationists." "There is a very large constituency of Americans who are quite comfortable with Young Earth Creationism."

To drive past the stegosaurus silhouettes at the gate to the parking lot at the Creation Museum here is to enter a creationist world in great ferment. Answers in Genesis is one of about a half-dozen creationist organizations and museums, each with its own headquarters, radio studios and Web sites, and scholarly and popular magazines. (A family-oriented column even ferrets out covert evolutionary messages in "Finding Nemo" and "My Big Fat Greek Wedding.")
Another creationist museum launches expeditions to the Papua New Guinea highlands in search of living pterodactyls.

All of this -- creationist zoology, paleontology, archaeology -- is framed in a distinctive academic language.

So one reads of post-Babel studies, and floodology and post-diluvium studies, these being the study of the world after Noah and the Great Flood, which is regarded as purest fact. The sanctified imagination, which is to say inspired by God, helps the scientists and artists at Creation Museum re-create the world of Adam and Eve, from sauropods playing with children to the "humongous" mature trees that God created in a single day.

"Our artists anticipated some challenging . . . work," the Answers of Genesis Web site notes.

Young Earth Creationists emphasize the rigor of their science. Looy rattles off the names of experts with doctorates, many of whom obtained degrees from mainstream universities. A creationist scientist, Kurt Wise, worked as a graduate student at Harvard with prominent biologist Stephen Jay Gould. John Baumgardner of the Los Alamos National Laboratory became a well-regarded designer of computer models for planetary catastrophes.

They herald successes. Recent discoveries by geologists tend to support creationists' beliefs that great floods -- albeit not necessarily ordered up by God -- played a role in gouging out some canyon lands.

But often, scientists say, the creationist bottom line is a through-the-looking-glass version of science. The scientific method of theory, experiment and assumptions upended does not apply. Ask Ham if he could accept evidence that conflicts with his reading of Genesis -- proof, say, that a fossil is more than 6,000 years old -- and he shakes his head.

Creationists believe man became mortal when God cast Adam and Eve out of Eden 6,000 years ago. Death did not exist before that.

"We admit we have an axiom: We have a book and it's the Bible and it's revealed history," says Ham. "Where the Bible teaches on science, we can trust it as the word of God."

Scientists place the age of Earth at 4.5 billion years. Many tend to act resigned at the mention of creationists, seeing a worldview so different as to defy debate.
"There are people who are prepared to accept that the universe is a pretty untidy place," said Ian Tattersall, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History. "And there are people, like the creationists, whose minds rebel at this notion."

Ham, whose voice carries broad hints of his native Australia, is a charismatic speaker and skilled debater, and he has built Answers in Genesis into the world's leading creationist organization in less than a decade. He raised nearly $20 million to build the museum, and the average donation was about $70, officials say.

Answers in Genesis hews to no particular evangelical line. Ham's politics lean strongly to the right, seeing America as under siege by homosexuality and abortion. In a recent column for the Rev. Jerry Falwell's newspaper, Ham described his mission as "fighting the 'Philistines' of our day."

"By and large, much of the church has compromised God's Word in Genesis by allowing millions of years and evolutionary ideas to be embraced by God's people," Ham wrote. "We need to take back the maligned Grand Canyon, the majestic mountain ranges, the massive coal beds . . . and the dinosaur fossils."
Ham is ambivalent on the question of intelligent design. He admires the movement's founders and applauds their battles. But he is skeptical of creationists who see intelligent design as a battering ram that might smash down the constitutional doors and allow the Bible back into schools.

"They are not a Christian movement, they are not about the Bible," he says in his spacious corner office at the museum. "It's not even against evolution, not really, because they don't tell you what that intelligence is. It could open a door for Muslim belief, for Hindus, for New Age.

"We are telling you unashamedly that the word of the Bible is the way."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

And the hits keep on coming

These fuckers just can't help themselves........they have yet to find an ethics violation they didn't like:

Frist Issue Adds to GOP's Ethics TroublesSale of Stock Before Its Price Fell Gives Critics Opening to Target Senate Leadership

By Charles Babington and Jeffrey H. BirnbaumWashington Post Staff WritersSunday, September 25, 2005; A06

Two federal inquiries into Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's stock sales have handed Democrats a chance to broaden their long-stated claim that Republicans push ethical boundaries and focus on laws that help the rich, political analysts said yesterday.

Until now, such accusations have centered on the House and White House. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (Tex.) has been chastised three times by the chamber's ethics committee, and a Texas grand jury recently indicted a political action committee he had organized. The Bush administration's top federal procurement official, David H. Safavian, was arrested last week on charges of obstructing a criminal investigation into lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has close ties to DeLay and other prominent GOP lawmakers.

Now, with the revelation that federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into Frist's sale of hospital stock shortly before its value fell, Democrats are expanding their ethics accusations into the Senate's GOP leadership ranks.

Activists in both parties agree it is much too early to say whether Frist (R-Tenn.) engaged in insider trading, a charge that could cripple his 2008 presidential hopes. But the mere launch of inquiries by the SEC and the Justice Department allows Democrats to claim that both House and Senate majority leaders operate under ethical clouds.

"It is a drip, drip, drip," said former House majority leader Tony Coelho (D-Calif.), who knows the corrosive power of ethics charges. Coelho, who resigned in 1989 following accusations about a loan deal, said, "With DeLay and now Frist, it's a buildup of arrogance of power. . . . With [President] Bush's numbers down, this could be a very negative thing for the Republicans."

Democratic consultant Jenny Backus said many Americans already think "things are rotten" in the capital's Republican-dominated political circles. "To have the Senate majority leader under an ethics cloud is going to drive this point home for the voters," she said.

Republicans expressed confidence in Frist and his ability to weather the controversy. "Democrats will try to make a lot out of this and pounce on whatever they can," said Nicholas E. Calio, a former aide to both Presidents Bush. "To me, it's inconceivable that he [Frist] would sell stock based on inside information. He doesn't need the money."

In carefully worded statements, Frist's office has said the senator instructed managers of his "qualified blind trust" in June to sell his family's shares in HCA Inc., the nation's largest hospital chain, founded by Frist's father and brother. A month later, the stock's price dropped 9 percent after the company predicted weakening earnings. It is illegal to trade stocks based on inside information. Frist, a wealthy surgeon, "had no information about the company or its performance that was not available to the public when he directed the trustees to sell the HCA stock," his office said.

The senator's spokesmen say he sold the HCA stock to avoid possible conflicts of interest as Congress deals with health care legislation. For years, however, Frist had rejected arguments that his stock holdings could cause a possible conflict.
Frist, asked in a January 2003 TV interview whether he should sell his HCA stock, replied that his assets were in a blind trust and, "as far as I know, I own no HCA stock." Referring to his trust and those of his family, he added: "It is illegal right now for me to know what the composition of those trusts are. So I have no idea."

Financial disclosure documents filed with the Secretary of the Senate by the trustees, and reviewed Friday by the Associated Press, show that two weeks before the interview, a trustee notified Frist that HCA stock had been contributed to his trust. Spokesman Bob Stevenson said yesterday that Frist was truthful in the TV interview because the trustee can sell assets at any time without notifying the senator, and, therefore, on any given day the trust's contents are unknown to him. Stevenson said Frist declined to be interviewed for this article.

The Senate Ethics Manual allows a lawmaker to instruct the trustee of a qualified blind trust "to sell all of an asset" if the senator determines it "creates a conflict of interest or the appearance thereof due to the subsequent assumptions of duties" by the senator.

Some nonpartisan analysts said the Frist case could fizzle, in legal and political terms, if anything short of insider trading is proved. For one thing, they say, the story has broken at a time when hurricanes are dominating the national news. Moreover, they say, questions of blind trusts and stock transactions may prove too arcane to captivate the average voter.

"I'm not yet convinced that the cloud over Frist is all that dark and all that big," said Stuart Rothenberg of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. "The Democrats are going to have to make the case about party corruption. What's more, this is a stock deal. Partisan people will say this proves a lot. Other people will say, 'Stocks and trusts, I don't know this stuff.' "

Backus disagrees. Average Americans, she said, understand the notion of powerful and privileged people getting sweetheart deals. Many are already suspicious of a Republican Party that pushes tax cuts, bankruptcy policies and other measures that disproportionately benefit the wealthy, she said.
In fact, Backus said, DeLay's controversial dealings with Texas campaign finance laws and legislative redistricting are more difficult to explain than the questions surrounding Frist. "You have to talk a lot of Washington talk" to outline the case against DeLay, she said. People will more readily grasp the implications of a "less-than-blind trust" and GOP leaders who seem more intent on "the interests of their friends than the interests of the American people."
Backus also noted that ethics inquiries sometimes claim unintended victims. For instance, she said, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's possible shot at a Supreme Court seat could be complicated by the fact that his Justice Department is scrutinizing the leader of the Senate, which will confirm or reject the next nominee.

Another Democratic consultant, Jim Jordan, said Frist's troubles could prompt other GOP senators to view him warily, just as some House Republicans worry that DeLay's ethical lapses might tarnish them. "The interesting question is whether rank-and-file Republican members decide to try to save themselves by throwing their corrupt leadership overboard," Jordan said.

Charlie Cook of the independent Cook Political Report said the Frist news comes at a time of sagging approval ratings and other problems for the Republican Party. "You wonder if it's death by a thousand cuts," he said. "All these little bitty scandals. Individually they don't amount to much. Collectively they sort of add up."

"The biggest toll," Cook said, "is for Frist's presidential aspirations. They were already on the ropes. He's not gotten good reviews as the Republican leader in the Senate. . . . The guy is pretty damaged merchandise in terms of presidential aspirations."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

I love how Baby Bush approaches investigations

just appoint someone who would have been investigated as the investigator. Kinda like having Enron investigate possible accounting fraud perpetrated by Enron:


Bush Katrina Probe Nominee Draws FlakQuestions raised over Frances Townsend's role in Katrina failings

By TIMOTHY J. BURGER/WASHINGTON

President Bush's choice of Homeland Security Adviser Frances Townsend to handle the Administration's internal inquiry into its flawed handling of Hurricane Katrina has drawn criticism from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill. "Anyone who has basically had responsibilities to respond to this should not be the folks looking at it, in my judgment," Congressman Christopher Shays of Connecticut, a senior Republican on the House Committee on Homeland Security, told TIME. Though Townsend is "a tough lady," Shays said, "I don't think she can be objective because, frankly, I would want to know what was she doing in that time, before the storm, during the storm, after the storm. She is going to be one of the people that, in a sense, is being investigated. So I'm not sure that she's the logical choice."

Democrats, who have demanded an independent probe along the lines of the 9/11 Commission and have rejected the principle of an internal inquiry into Katrina failures, went even further: "There is a huge conflict of interest here," said Rebecca Kirszner, communications director for Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. "As the President's homeland security adviser, Townsend certainly was part of the Administration's response to Katrina."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino declined to directly address such criticism, saying Wednesday that "the President has said he is committed to finding out what went wrong and what went right and the lessons to be learned. We are also committed to fully supporting the congressional investigation in addition to this internal review."

Townsend, according to a 2003 Executive Order issued in the course of establishing the Department of Homeland Security, is "the official primarily responsible for advising and assisting the President in the coordination of domestic incident management activities of all departments and agencies in the event of a terrorist threat, and during and in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, major disasters, or other emergencies, within the United States."

A holdover from the Clinton Administration, the former prosecutor has served in a number of counter-terrorism capacities in both the previous and current administrations. Top-level liaison with allied governments and intelligence agencies on terrorism matters has been a major aspect of her work — one that she relishes, according to a knowledgable former U.S. official.

Despite the domestic upheaval caused by Katrina, Townsend left town on September 9 — the day then-FEMA director Michael Brown was relieved of his duties supervsing the hurricane response — for a previously-scheduled five-day trip for consultations with intelligence chiefs in such countries as Morocco and Afghanistan, as well as with Saudi Arabia's new ruler, King Abdullah bin-Abdulaziz.

Critics have questioned whether it was appropriate for her to have made that trip as the administration scrambled to respond to Katrina. Perino had previously told TIME that President Bush had wanted Townsend to remain focused on vigilance against possible terrorist attack. "From the beginning it was important that we also stay focused on our national security and so, as her title is both homeland security and counter-terrorism [adviser], this trip, which was already scheduled way in advance, went forward," Perino said. Perino said Townsend had delegated Katrina duties to Deputy Assistant to the President for Homeland Security Ken Rapuano, who had "been engaged from well before the storm hit the coast." Still, Perino said, Townsend stayed personally involved in the response: "She was certainly engaged — I should say strongly engaged — up through the Friday night and then went on her previously-scheduled trip to fulfill her counter-terrorism responsibilities, but received updates and participated in the response efforts during her travel."

Copyright © 2005 Time Inc. All rights reserved.Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

The Abramhoff story keeps going, and going, and going...

This scumbag is gonna bring everyone down:

Tyco Exec: Abramoff Claimed Ties to Administration

By R. Jeffrey SmithWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, September 23, 2005; A06

Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff bragged two years ago that he was in contact with White House political aide Karl Rove on behalf of a large, Bermuda-based corporation that wanted to avoid incurring some taxes and continue receiving federal contracts, according to a written statement by President Bush's nominee to be deputy attorney general.

Timothy E. Flanigan, general counsel for conglomerate Tyco International Ltd., said in a statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week that Abramoff's lobbying firm initially boasted that Abramoff could help Tyco fend off a special liability tax because he "had good relationships with members of Congress," including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).

Abramoff later said "he had contact with Mr. Karl Rove" about the issue, according to the statement by Flanigan, who oversaw Tyco's dealings with Abramoff and his firm and received reports from Abramoff about progress in the lobbying campaign. Flanigan's statement is the latest indication that Abramoff promoted himself as having ready access to senior officials in the Bush administration.

A White House spokeswoman, Erin Healy, said Rove "has no recollection" of being contacted by Abramoff about Tyco's concerns.

Abramoff was indicted last month on unrelated wire fraud and conspiracy charges and has lost his high-stakes lobbying clients. He was hired in 2003 by Tyco when the company was in turmoil. Abramoff's firm, Greenberg Traurig, promoted him as Tyco's savior on the tax issue, according to Flanigan's statement and others familiar with the process.

Tyco -- whose executive L. Dennis Kozlowski had just departed under an ethics cloud -- was worried that the Bush administration might embrace legislation promoted by Democrats that would impose higher taxes on domestic-centered companies that had moved offshore to cut their tax bills. The legislation was motivated by popular anger over such offshore moves, and carried the additional penalty of barring such firms from receiving federal contracts.

Lobbying disclosure statements filed by Abramoff listing his work for Tyco cite the "Executive Office of the President" as one of his lobbying targets on the tax and contracts issues. Others were the Department of Commerce, the General Services Administration and Congress. Greenberg Traurig records submitted to Tyco describe specific contacts with the White House legislative office, a source familiar with the matter said yesterday.

Rove's personal assistant at the time, Susan Ralston, formerly worked as Abramoff's secretary. It could not be learned yesterday whether she was among those contacted by any of the 14-person Greenberg team recorded as working on the Tyco account.

The Bush administration was never enthusiastic about the tax penalty, but both the House and Senate approved language in 2002 denying federal contracts to companies largely based in the United States but incorporated in tax havens.

Tyco was among a raft of companies, including Ingersoll-Rand and Noble Corp., that hired an army of lobbyists to stall the legislation and ultimately kill most of it. House Republican leaders argued that corporate flight was merely a symptom of a much broader problem with the U.S. tax code that should be treated in a larger tax reform package.

Abramoff remains the focus of a lengthy investigation by a task force led by prosecutors at the Justice Department and including investigators at the Internal Revenue Service, the Interior Department and General Services Administration. The probe was initially focused on whether he bilked Native American tribes that paid him tens of millions of dollars in lobbying and other fees, but has since widened to include other matters.

Flanigan, who is still at Tyco while awaiting a committee vote on his nomination, said in his Sept. 15 written statement that he would "consult with DOJ ethics officials . . . and apply normal recusal standards" about the Justice Department's investigation of Abramoff.

Flanigan said he would recuse himself from any Abramoff investigation involving Tyco. Portions of his statement were first reported in the Los Angeles Times.

The ties between Tyco and Greenberg Traurig have already been investigated by a special counsel appointed by Greenberg to examine Abramoff's activities at the firm. According to knowledgeable sources and Flanigan's written statement, Greenberg has promised to repay three-quarters of a $2 million fee that Tyco paid, at Abramoff's direction, to a firm called Grassroots Interactive.

The fee was supposed to finance a letter-writing campaign by Tyco suppliers against the offshore tax bill, but Greenberg concluded that $1.5 million of it was "diverted to entities controlled by Mr. Abramoff" and misspent, according to Flanigan's statement.

Andrew Blum, a spokesman for Abramoff's law firm, declined to comment, as did Jill Perry, a spokeswoman for Greenberg Traurig.

Staff reporter Jonathan Weisman contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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Christopher Reeve checked out too soon

Stem Cell Injections Repair Spinal Cord Injuries in MiceScientists Say Approach Is Not Ready for Testing in Humans

By Rick WeissWashington Post Staff WriterTuesday, September 20, 2005; A02

Mice with severe spinal cord injuries regained much of their ability to walk normally after getting injections of stem cells taken from the brains of human fetuses, scientists in California reported yesterday.

The work strengthens recent evidence that various kinds of stem cells -- including some from human embryos and others from fetuses -- have the capacity to nurse injured nerve cells back to health and in some cases even become replacement neurons themselves.

Scientists cautioned that the approach was not ready for testing in patients with spinal cord diseases or injuries. "This is a first step in what has to be a long series of steps to get to anything clinical," said Aileen Anderson, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Irvine, who led the latest work with colleague Brian Cummings.

But at least three companies are racing to become the first to inject their neural stem cells into patients, and some researchers say the first of those studies could begin within the next nine months.

Yesterday, StemCells Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., whose cells were used in the new mouse study, filed an amended application to the Food and Drug Administration asking permission to start injecting the cells into the brains of infants with Batten disease, a fatal, inherited syndrome that destroys the central nervous system.

The new research, described in the Sept. 27 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, tracked mice injected with a kind of human stem cells called neurospheres. They are the laboratory-grown progeny of human cells retrieved from the brains of 16- to 18-week aborted fetuses.

Nine days after getting identical spinal cord injuries, each animal received about 75,000 neurospheres in four injections around the injury.

Within a day, the team reported, the cells began to migrate into the injured spinal cord. After 16 weeks, the mice were given tests of agility and leg coordination, and compared with two other groups. Mice that had received the stem cells scored significantly better than similarly injured mice that had not -- and also better than those injected with ordinary skin cells, a test to see whether just any kind of cellular injection might trigger healing. Researchers who scored the tests did not know which mice had received the injections.

The differences were "obvious to the untrained eye," Anderson said, with improvements both in terms of how many weight-bearing steps the mice could take and their ability to place their rear feet precisely where needed to cross a ladderlike bridge.

Microscopic analysis showed that most of the injected cells had turned into two different kinds of cells around the injury, said Anderson, who does not have a direct financial stake in the company but whose team included two members who do. Some became oligodendrocytes, which wrap themselves around injured nerve cells to help them transmit electrical signals. Others turned into neurons themselves.

Very few turned into a third kind of central nervous system cell, astrocytes, which contribute to scar formation and are generally undesirable around injuries.

Moreover, the neurospheres that became new neurons appear to have made connections with nerve cells that survived the initial injury -- a crucial development if those new nerves are really to help.

In a test to see whether the new human cells were really key to the animals' recovery, the team gave some of the recovering mice injections of a toxin that selectively kills human cells. The mice that got the injections regressed in their ability to walk, while those not injected continued to improve.

Two other U.S. companies also say they are close to the goal of testing human neural stem cells as therapies.

Earlier this year, Hans Keirstead and his colleagues, also at the University of California at Irvine, reported that rats with disabling spinal injuries could walk nearly normally again after getting injections with human embryonic, rather than fetal, cells developed by Geron Corp. of Menlo Park, Calif.

Those cells were initially harvested from days-old human embryos and then cultivated under special laboratory conditions that forced them to become immature oligodendrocytes. Once injected into injured spinal cords, the cells matured and wrapped themselves around injured neurons, which often lose those natural coverings as a result of injury-induced inflammation, leaving even intact neurons unable to function properly.

Geron has said it hopes to begin clinical trials in patients next year.

A third company, NeuralStem Inc. of Gaithersburg, is also in the race.

In unpublished research, rats with spinal cord damage improved significantly after getting injections of human fetal spinal cord cells, said neuroscientist Martin Marsala of the University of California at San Diego, who led the studies with NeuralStem's cells. The animals had ischemic paraplegia, a paralysis of the lower body and rear limbs caused by a temporary blockage of blood flow to the spine.

Patients with this syndrome, which can occur when one of the body's large arteries bursts, are not only paralyzed but also suffer from spastic twitches because of the loss of a kind of neuron that normally suppresses those movements. In rat and pig studies, about one-third of the human fetal cells morphed into exactly that type of neuron, resulting in far less spasticity, Marsala said.

NeuralStem has been talking with the FDA with the aim of getting the go-ahead to begin human testing next year.
The FDA has said several questions will have to be answered before such tests can go forward, including whether some stem cells might turn into the wrong kinds of cells after being injected.

One down

well here is one Bush administration official down.....................

Bush Official Arrested in Corruption Probe

By R. Jeffrey Smith and Susan SchmidtWashington Post Staff WritersTuesday, September 20, 2005; A01

The Bush administration's top federal procurement official resigned Friday and was arrested yesterday, accused of lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dealings with the federal government. It was the first criminal complaint filed against a government official in the ongoing corruption probe related to Abramoff's activities in Washington.

The complaint, filed by the FBI, alleges that David H. Safavian, 38, a White House procurement official involved until last week in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, made repeated false statements to government officials and investigators about a golf trip with Abramoff to Scotland in 2002.

It also contends that he concealed his efforts to help Abramoff acquire control of two federally managed properties in the Washington area. Abramoff is the person identified as "Lobbyist A" in a 13-page affidavit unsealed in court, according to sources knowledgeable about the probe.

Until his resignation on the day the criminal complaint against him was signed, Safavian was the top administrator at the federal procurement office in the White House Office of Management and Budget, where he set purchasing policy for the entire government.

The arrest occurred at his home in Alexandria. A man who answered the phone there yesterday hung up when a reporter asked to speak to Safavian.

Abramoff was indicted by federal prosecutors in Miami last month on unrelated charges of wire fraud and conspiracy. He remains the linchpin of an 18-month probe by a federal task force that includes the Internal Revenue Service, the Interior Department and the Justice Department's fraud and public integrity units. His lawyer did not respond to phone calls seeking comment.

Abramoff's allegedly improper dealings with Indian tribes -- which netted him and an associate at least $82 million in fees -- prompted the federal probe. But investigators have found that his documents and e-mails contain a trove of information about his aggressive efforts to seek favors for clients from members of Congress and senior bureaucrats.

Accompanying Safavian and Abramoff on the 2002 trip to Scotland, for example, were Rep. Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), chairman of the House Administration Committee, lobbyist and former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed and Neil Volz, a lobbyist with Abramoff at the Washington office of Greenburg Traurig.

Like Abramoff, Safavian is a veteran Washington player. He is a former lobbying partner of anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist and previously worked with Abramoff at another firm. Both he and Abramoff have represented gambling clients and Indian tribes with gambling interests.

At the time of the golf trip, Safavian was chief of staff at the General Services Administration, where ethics rules flatly prohibited the receipt of a gift from any person seeking an official action by the agency. When Safavian asked GSA ethics officers for permission to go on the trip, he assured them in writing that Abramoff "has no business before GSA," according to the affidavit signed by FBI special agent Jeffrey A. Reising.
Reising alleged, however, that Abramoff had by then already secretly enlisted Safavian in an effort to buy 40 acres of land that GSA managed in Silver Spring for use as the campus of a Hebrew school Abramoff founded. Safavian also allegedly tried to help Abramoff lease space for Abramoff's clients in an old post office building downtown.

On July 22, 2002, Abramoff sent Safavian an e-mail with a proposed draft letter that "at least two members of Congress" could send to GSA supporting the lease, according to the affidavit. "Does this work, or do you want it to be longer?" Abramoff asked.

Three days later, Safavian forwarded Abramoff an e-mail describing how an employee at OMB was resisting Abramoff's plan to lease space at the post office. "I suspect we'll end up having to bring some Hill pressure to bear on OMB," Safavian messaged Abramoff.

On the same day Safavian discussed the golf trip with the ethics office, he sent an e-mail to Abramoff from his home computer, advising him how to "lay out a case for this lease." Abramoff subsequently wrote in an e-mail to his wife and two officials of the school that Safavian had shown him a map of the property at his GSA office but had cautioned that Abramoff should not visit again "given my high profile politically."

Safavian nonetheless arranged a meeting for Abramoff's wife and business partner with officials at GSA on the day before he departed for Scotland aboard Abramoff's chartered jet. The trip cost more than $120,000 and was paid for mostly by a charity founded and run by Abramoff, the Capital Athletic Foundation.

When Safavian was questioned by The Washington Post about the trip in January, he said he paid his share of the expenses and took unpaid leave. "The trip was exclusively personal; I did no business there. . . . Jack is an old friend of mine," Safavian said.

But the complaint alleges that Safavian lied about his contacts with Abramoff on three occasions after his initial false pledge to the GSA ethics officer. The first was during a 2003 investigation by GSA's inspector general, who was responding to an anonymous tipster's hotline complaint; the second was in a March 17, 2005, letter to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs; and the third was during an FBI interview on May 26, 2005.

This is a classic example of the govt. response to Katrina

Taken from Time:

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1105526,00.html?cnn=yes

But the feds haven't totally forgotten this stretch of coastline. On a recent day, a lone piece of paper weighed down by a brick flapped in the Gulf breezes on one of the concrete slabs that had been swept clean by the storm surge. Printed large in the upper left corner of the page was the seal of the Department of Homeland Security. The letter, addressed to the owner Gladis Miskell, read: "I visited your home today to perform an inspection of the damages to your home and personal property caused by the recent disaster. Since you were not here, I was unable to complete the inspection. Your application for temporary Housing Assistance and the Individual and Family Grant Program cannot be processed until the inspection is completed. It is very important that you contact us as soon as possible."

And Republicans wonder....

why people believe they (especially the current admin. of Republicans) care more about oil then people:

pulled from todays Washinton Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html?referrer=email

The News From Hattiesburg

Sometimes the best place to find out what the White House is doing is, well, anywhere but the White House.

Case in point: Nikki Davis Maute writes in the Hattiesburg (Miss.) American: "Shortly after Hurricane Katrina roared through South Mississippi knocking out electricity and communication systems, the White House ordered power restored to a pipeline that sends fuel to the Northeast.

"That order - to restart two power substations in Collins that serve Colonial Pipeline Co. - delayed efforts by at least 24 hours to restore power to two rural hospitals and a number of water systems in the Pine Belt. . . .

"Dan Jordan, manager of Southern Pines Electric Power Association, said Vice President Dick Cheney's office called and left voice mails twice shortly after the storm struck, saying the Collins substations needed power restored immediately."

Billy Bob Thornton Interview

Here is a pretty good interview in which he mentions WSP, Vic Chesnutt, and Col. Bruce:

http://www.glidemagazine.com/articles193.html

Billy Bob Thornton: Slinging a New BladeEric WardMonday, September 05, 2005

Aside from the academy award, established acting career, esteemed directing work, acclaimed screenwriting, notable pitching arm and the enviable Angelina Jolie connection, Billy Bob Thornton also happens to be a lifelong musician and songwriter. And that’s not just some side project to keep an actor entertained in the off-season. In the midst of another busy movie year, his third album, Hobo, is due this fall. It’s the long anticipated follow-up to his previous two efforts which earned him a gold record and a headline spot at last year’s SXSW. So yeah, this isn’t David Hasselhoff doing remixes, this is a serious musician who just happens to also write and direct feature films. It’s quite a resume, but he’s quick to note the absurdity of making the distinction between careers, or as he puts its, worrying if an album is made by a plumber or an actor, and just let it stand on it’s own. Fair enough…I suppose it really doesn’t matter he almost played for the Kansas City Royals before going on to win the Oscar for Sling Blade. It’s still one of the greatest movies of all time.

And for all his successes, Thornton somehow remains humble and empathetic. Hobo is a storyteller’s album, offering vivid tales of the pilgrimages made every day to the land of swimming pools and movie stars. It’s a path he knows well, but only one of the many he’s taken so far.

You’ve obviously developed as an actor over the years, but now that you’re releasing your third album, how have you developed as a songwriter?

Well, I think actually the songwriting gets better every time. I think this is really my best record…and a lot of the reason is because it’s a little more cohesive. What we’ve done on our past records, we’ve had sort of an eclectic mix of songs, which would have been ok in 1969, but now, its hard for people to listen to more than one sound on a record. It’s a little bit different now. So this record, its got sort of a thru-line in terms of the vibe, and sonically. And the whole record was made but just me, Randy Mitchell and Matt Laug, just three of us.

It was all recorded at your home studio right, which used to be Slash’s place?

Yeah, it used to be the Snake Pit, now its called The Cave.

What’s the set up down there, is it totally digital? You seem like you’d be into analog.

Well, I really am. We’ve always cut on RADAR, which is so warm and fat, people never know its not analog. But this is the first record that we used ProTools. And I was always against it, but the thing is, its so fast, and so handy - particularly when you’re making a record with only a couple of you.
What we did was, Randy and I would write songs and then put them down, just with an acoustic guitar and vocal, but we did them all to a click [track]. Sometimes we’d find a [drum] loop to put in there, just for the time being, and that way, at the end of it, when we’d written everything, and everything was down - we had all the guitars, all the vocals, everything - then Matt Laug, our drummer came in, and in two or three days played drums to every song. And some drummers are not as good at that, and some are great at it, Matt happens to be really good at it. Anyhow, that’s the way we made it. And since Randy always used ProTools, we gave it a shot.

We have a Trident 80 board down here, so we cut in ProTools and mixed it through the Trident board to 1 inch tape. And when you hear it, the record’s very lush, very warm sounding. So its really got an analog sound. I think mixing to 1 inch tape really did something.
We had an amazing time on it. I’m real proud of the songs, I’m proud of the lyrics, the melodies…everything. And I’m proud of the other records too. Private Radio, it was a fairly critically acclaimed record - it’s not like we sell a lot of records, but for the most part anyway, the critics liked that record - on the second one, it wasn’t so much that way. And I think a lot of the reason is ‘cause we start the record off with a bunch of rock songs, and by the end of the record, its mostly like, country stuff. And I’m not sure people are geared these days to wrap their heads around that.

On this latest record, the running theme is California, and the land of dreams, and people naively coming to L.A. with stars in their eyes. Of course most of your characters go through the ringer, but in the end, they seem to have some sense of resolution. Is it safe to assume that these are loosely autobiographical?

Yeah, I mean for the most part it is. They’re not all stories about myself necessarily, some are stories about people I’ve known or whatever, situations I’ve observed, but it’s just a collection of stories about success, failure, fear, joy, sadness - kind of everything that goes into trying to get somewhere, trying to make it - and California being the final frontier in a way. And it still is, a frontier. There is still a pilgrimage here all the time by people. Some people end up on the street, some people end up successful, some people end up like on the song “Gray Walls,” kind of shut behind their wall, even though it seems on the surface they have the perfect life. And then the story of the hobo guy, the homeless person, isn’t necessarily, in a spiritual sense, any different then the guy behind the walls. They’re both kind of shut off from society in some way.
These characters are all quite vivid. I assume you use the same skill set to develop characters on screen as you do lyrically?
Yeah, its not any different. As hard as people try to separate music from movies, its really the same thing. I mean there’s not much difference between a sculptor and a painter. But for some reason prejudice doesn’t go both ways. Like the movies don’t traditionally shut out musicians. The music world tends to shut out movie actors, or at least place a great burden to succeed, because you start with a strike against you. It’s like “oh, an actor is making a record.” Well, I don’t even know what that means (laughs). I’m mean, I’m not sure how that was ever defined. People can talk, “oh, Travolota made a pop record” or whatever it is, but the fact of the matter is, there have been plenty of musicians in movies who were shitty too. But there are plenty of actors who are shitty who have never been musicians, and vice versa. There are plenty of bands out there that just suck, and none of them have ever been in a movie. But when their record is reviewed, even if the critic doesn’t like the record, they still judge it based on it’s musical merit. They just go, “well, the Doorknobs have come out with another turkey,” or whatever. “This time the guitar playing is not up to snuff, blah, blah, blah.” They never say “oh, here we go, another group of plumbers from Cincinnati trying to make a record” (laughs). But if its an actor, they say that.
I think the music business is a very closed off, jealous business. More so now than ever. And maybe a lot of the reason is, it’s so hard these days to get in the music business, and actually get a record deal, sell records, all that kind of stuff. If you’re not one of the top pop people, top country people, top rap people, then you’re screwed. So there’s not a lot of room, and everybody else ends up…well, let me put it this way, I can talk to somebody who’s 25 years old, or 19 years old or whatever, probably 35, and mention John Prine or JJ Cale or somebody like that, and they’re like, “who?” But they know Ashlee Simpson.

John Prine needs a reality show.

Exactly (laughs). That’s right. Put him in an apartment with some other songwriters for six months to see which one of them gets married to the other one…

Do those preconceived notions concern you at all? "Actor makes an album."

Not as much anymore. I like making records so much that…well sure it bugs me when it comes up, but it’s not something I spend time thinking about just when I’m hanging around or when I’m making a record. But when it comes up it bugs me.

They throw the term “country” around when they describe your sound, but this record is really about as country as Tom Waits is. So what does that say about the state of country music, or the industry as a whole for that matter?

Well its all mixed up out there. But first of all…I’m glad you said that, because I rarely get somebody saying what you just said, which is I’m as country as Tom Waits is. If I weren’t from the south, lets say I was from Connecticut, and my name was, I don’t know, Chad Worthington, or something like that, I probably wouldn’t have my music called country. But the fact that people sort of think of Texas or Arkansas, and because of my name, I think they automatically throw that on there.
But I think country music, really now, is not what country music was initially. When I was growing up…it’s almost like the guys who really are country, like Merle Haggard or George Jones or somebody like that, its almost like they’ve been put into some “old guy” category, like they’re folk singers like Woody Guthrie or somebody. Like it's this whole different kind of thing. And people say, “yeah, I listen to old country sometimes,” instead of just calling it country. Because what country has become, in Nashville anyway, its really 80’s pop ballads, 80’s rock ballads. You throw a cowboy hat on some guy and have a steel guitar in there, and yet you’re playing a song that may as well be Def Leppard. And a lot of those cats that produced those 80’s ballads are producers in Nashville now. So that’s where it comes from. Its like, “oh well, the bottom fell out of this, we’ll go do this thing for a while.”
Yeah, I think commercial radio country music these days - it’s really suffering. You got a few people out there, well Dwight [Yoakam] always stays true. And then you got other guys like Steve Earle or Pat Green, or Steven Bruton, a good friend of ours who tours with us some, they’re like alt-country, or "Americana" or whatever. So they’re having to create categories these days for real music (laughs). Its like they had to invent some [new genres] because you can’t be in those other things anymore. Whereas when I was growing up, you turn a radio station on, you could hear Johnny Cash on a station that you heard JJ Cale on. Or a better example, you’d hear Deep Purple and James Taylor on the same station.

When you were younger you had a band called Hot ’Lanta, named after the Allman Brother’s song, and you’ve praised their Fillmore East album - but that was an originals band, you weren’t just playing Allman covers?

No. We would play an Allman Brothers song from time to time, but it wasn’t like an Allman Brothers cover band or anything like that. I think the only song we did was…well we did “Stormy Monday” and we did more their version of it. [That] was in the early 70’s.

You also directed Widespread Panic’s Live At The Georgia Theatre documentary back in ‘91, and then followed up years later by doing their video for ‘Aunt Avis.”

[Live At The Georgia Theatre] was the first thing I ever directed. Back in the 80’s, I was managed by a guy…who wasn’t really in the movie business (laughs). I had my theatrical agent, but I was managed by a guy who’d been a big record producer, record executive, had his own label forever, who was one of my heroes named Phil Walden. And Phil’s the guy that had the Allman Brothers and Marshall Tucker…was Otis Reddings manager early on. And he and I got to know each other, and he became my manager, and the only actors he managed were me and Jim Varney…so I used to hang out with him and Varney all the time. And when Capricorn [Records] got back on it’s feet again he signed up Widespread Panic. And he said, “would you want to direct a long-form video on this band Widespread Panic?” And when I thought about it, I said “yeah, might be nice to make it also just kind of a flavor of Athens, Georgia maybe too, as opposed to just a concert film.” Looking back on it, that was in my formative years as a director, and maybe it could have been better, but it’s actually pretty good. I look at it every now and then…we did ok for people who didn’t know what we were doing. Yeah, I love those guys, I always did. You know, they lost Mikey [Houser], their guitar player a couple of years back and that was really sad. A great guy, I tell ya…

Yeah, that was a terrible loss. And you’ve actually directed musicians quite a few times over the years. In Sling Blade, you cast Dwight [Yoakam], Col. Bruce Hampton and Vic Chestnutt as the band. How well did you know them before casting? Because aside from obviously being a great film, that musical element, and those band scenes in particular are classics.

Yeah, I didn’t know Vic that well, I knew him, but not that well. I knew Bruce very well…(laughs) Bruce is a whole different cat man, I love him. Also, Ian Moore was in there and I knew Ian a little bit…and Mickey Jones was the drummer.

It’s funny, cause those scenes, you know, we all went through that growing up in bands. You were always in some garage band that wasn’t really worth a shit, and you had one guy in the band that was an asshole and thought he ran things, and there’s another guy who thought he was a poet (laughs). It’s just taking the experiences we all had and just throwing them in there. But I have to say, I did sort of make that poem that Colonel Bruce recites in the movie, I actually wrote that sort of specifically for Bruce, cause that’s kind of the way he talks anyway…so when other people heard it they thought it was hilarious and bizarre, and Bruce, he just thought it was normal (laughs).

Have you thought about combining the two arts, and doing soundtracks?

I’d love to. I work very closely with the people who do music for my movies, Daniel Lanois in particular. I’m going to be directing another movie next year, and Dan and I are gonna collaborate on that one.

With all the success you’ve had, how do you remain grounded in Hollywood?

Well, I don’t really hang out with people in the movie business. I gotta couple of friends who are actors…I would consider John Cusack a friend and Matt Damon. But I don’t really go anywhere, so I don’t have to get involved with it too much. I mean, when I have to go do press for movie I gotta go, but other than that I’m home with the kids or down in the studio, so I just kind of stay out of it.

What changed after you won the Oscar? At that point, you could have gone any number of directions with your career.

Well, you just have to keep making good choices. One of the keys to being a good actor is making good choices. And every now and then you’ll do a movie - it’s not that I’m opposed to doing a commercial movie, a big movie if it’s a good one, I’ve done a few, but you just have to keep picking roles where you can play a different person every time. You can’t all of a sudden just want to play the hero guy that’s kind of one note throughout the movie…that’s a mistake a lot of people make. The lead role is not always the best one, I’ll put it that way. So when something pops up where you’re the only move star and everybody else is just incidental to you, sometimes those aren’t the best roles.

It’s been said you’re rather particular about things, so I’m curious, is your music collection strictly organized?

Well, I’m anal to a point. I want to know where they are. If I’m missing a record, I can’t get it off my mind. I have to either go out and buy it or find it. I’ve got a lot of them…I mean I’ve got thousands of CDs and they’re all over the house. No, I’m not one of those guys who’s built his own special drawers and everything’s in perfect alphabetical order, all kinds of cleaning rags everywhere and shit like that. I’m not like that, I’m too lazy for that. But I do collect records. I have my own sort of system. And I’ve got records of all kinds. On any given day I’ll listen to Jim Reeves and Johnny Cash and Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa and the Bonzo Dog Band and Bruce Hampton and Deep Purple (laughs). And Dean Martin is a big one for me, I listen to a lot of Dean Martin. Mel Torme, stuff like that.

You’re also an avid sports fan…you almost ended up playing pro baseball, so I wanted to ask you about your favorite team - you think the Cardinals will be back in the Series this year?

I sure hope so. It’s funny, a friend of mine, my co-producer and engineer Jim Mitchell is from Boston so he got to gloat quite a bit last year. And I told him the other day that I’m hoping the Red Sox get there again, have the Cardinals kick their asses. But the thing about baseball, like right now, the Cardinals are hard to beat, and they don’t even have some of their top guys in the lineup. Scott Rolen is still out, Larry Walker, guys like that, and yet they still keep winning...you know, 12, 13 games out in front. And a lot of my friend’s who are Cardinal fans, they get upset [like the other week when] we lost 3 out of 4 to the damn Cubs. And it annoys me…telling my friends, “you know what, that’s ok” - if they’re going out there, maybe they’re lackluster a little bit right now sometimes, and they go let like the Royals or the Rockies or somebody like that beat them…“don‘t worry about it, because we want them to get that shit out of their system now and not in [late] September or October.”

Well football season starts this week…any predictions for this year?

Well, I’m an Indianapolis Colts fans, so I would hope the Colts are gonna get in there, but the Colts are one of those teams that…they’re kind of like, remember Susan Lucci on the soap opera? You know, she would get nominated for an Emmy every year and never win it.

So Peyton Manning is the new Susan Lucci? (laughs)

(Laughs) Well I don’t know about that. Peyton Manning, that guy is so amazing, that guy is so good..I don’t think it’s anybody’s fault. They could use a little something defensively, but its such a powerful offense, they’re passing game is so great, but it just seems like, I think its more about, you know, once you lose something like that, you lose a big game, I think psychologically it does something to you. So I think it’s more of a psychological thing than anything else. But also it doesn’t help any that you play inside a house with a carpet and then you go over to Boston every year and play with these guys in like 5 below weather where the ground is hard as a rock and there’s snow in your face (laughs). That doesn’t help any.
That’s the other thing, Jim Mitchell, every night in the studio he’s got a different Patriots shirt on, and it just annoys the shit out of me. But I guarantee you this, the Patriots are not winning the Super Bowl this year. Not gonna happen. If I could predict anybody actually winning the Super Bowl this year, I would say the Steelers. I mean, I hope it’s the Colts. But I think last year, [Rothlisberger] got a little too popular, went on a few too many tv shows, and its like, “hey man, you’re still a rookie, you’re in the big time now, you better go out there and play.” (laughs).

Lastly, Happy Birthday…you just celebrated a big one. So with everything you’ve got going on right now, is 50 the new 30?

Absolutely! Brown is the new black and 50 is the new 30.

Corrupt Cops of the Week

Weekly: This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories 9/9/05
http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/402/thisweek1.shtml

Another mass bust of cops and soldiers in Arizona, a pair of DC cops having to explain why they had 90 pounds of coke in their luggage coming into Miami from South America, and a Honolulu cop busted for selling speed all make the Corrupt Cops feature this week. Without further ado:

In Tucson, federal prosecutors announced last week they had snared another 16 current and former soldiers and law enforcement officers in Arizona for agreeing to help FBI agents posing as cocaine traffickers get their wares through the border. Just four months ago, those same federal prosecutors arrested 17 more police and soldiers on similar charges. All 16 of those arrested last week have agreed to plead guilty, the prosecutors said. They included two current and three former members of the Arizona Army National Guard, seven former corrections officers with the Arizona Department of Corrections, two former soldiers, an ex-Marine and a former Nogales, AZ, police officer. The conspiracy in which they were charged was responsible for transporting nearly 1500 pounds of cocaine, said acting Assistant Attorney General John Richter in a press statement. The defendants wore official uniforms, carried official ID, and used official vehicles to skate through border and Arizona Department of Public Safety checkpoints, and to avoid police stops, searches, and seizures. They face up to five years in prison on cocaine conspiracy charges, but prosecutor John Scott said all pleading guilty would probably only serve 34 to 36 months.

In Honolulu, Police Officer James Corn Jr. was arrested August 24 on charges of selling methamphetamine. The bust came in a joint operation involving the DEA and the local High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) team. His police powers had been suspended after another investigation last year and he had been working in the department's communications department. Now he will be working on preserving his freedom.

In Washington, DC, two veteran police officers have been placed on administrative leave in connection with a cocaine bust last week at Miami International Airport. Officer Thomas Stephenson, 51, a 20-year veteran, and Lt. Wayne Stevenson, 48, a 22-year veteran, were detained and questioned but not arrested after federal agents seized 90 pounds of cocaine in their luggage upon their return from Guyana, where they had a contract to train police officers. DC police and US border services are both keeping mum so far.

The ScumSucker does not fall far from the ScumSucking tree

Now we know where W. gets his compassion..............pay particular attention to the quote from Barbara Bush at the bottom:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/07/AR2005090702341_pf.html

Floods Scour the Political Landscape, Too
By Tina BrownThursday, September 8, 2005; C01

Even though it is so familiar in our imaginations, it is still a wonderful moment in the upcoming Discovery documentary "The Flight That Fought Back" when the doomed passengers on Flight 93 seize the food cart and race it down the aisle toward the cockpit like a battering ram, united in courage and rage. At the preview of the movie at the Bryant Park Hotel in Manhattan you could feel the exhalation of tension in the audience during the reenactment: the wish-fulfillment, the satisfaction at the virility of the gesture.

New York may have superficially recovered since 9/11, but the Bush victory in the election last year left a hangover of self-doubt that drained the city's mojo. Katrina's perfect meteorological and political storm has at least blown away that mood. New York's sullen sense of carrying around a deviant secret -- that President Bush is an empty flight suit -- has gone with the wind.

If 9/11 was Bush's Woodstock, Katrina is his Altamont -- the place where his ability to unite people behind a flurry of flag-waving came to look like the hollow sham it always was. John Edwards's mantra of Two Americas doesn't sound so corny now that Bush's soaring vision of democracy on the march has suddenly been laid as bare as an abandoned Superdome where the toilets are overflowing.

But for New Yorkers, the dimensions of the pain mean there is not much glee in saying "I told you so." Ever since 9/11 we've been endlessly stiffed on "homeland security." Millions for red Montana, nickels for blue New York.

We had to grit our teeth and host the cynical hijacking of 9/11 by the Republican convention last year, where even Rudy Giuliani franchised his (and our) authentic moment of heroism to the Bush reelection machine.

The twin towers are still a gaping hole in the ground fought over by greedy real estate agents, prima donna architects and culture warriors distractedly arbitrated by a Republican governor preoccupied with national political ambitions. The current plans for a third-rate office building on top of a bunker with a censored museum seems like a strange advertisement for freedom. But perhaps it suits the city's mood of lingering disappointment after 9/11's squandered goodwill. Osama bin Laden's outrage goes unavenged while we continue to suck wind in Baghdad.

But now, in Katrina's aftermath, there's something different in the air: the scent of insurrection. The needless torment of New Orleans has reignited the dormant passions of the election. E-mails are flying again between friends who've been out of touch for months, enclosing Web links to new polemics of disgust. The big donors with wallet fatigue after John Kerry's loss are ready to write checks again, big time, for any Democrat who shows courage.

It's as if the tragedy in the Gulf Coast has awakened us from a deep materialistic sleep to acknowledge the pain of poverty and racial inequality for the first time in years. Those Democrats who still temporize for fear of being tagged as "playing politics" don't seem to understand that being all kissyface and timid is as over as strategy as it is as substance. Better to play politics than play possum. Maybe Hillary should stop going on fact-finding trips to Alaska with her new Republican pals. Even before Katrina changed the landscape, her careful tactics of sleeping with the enemy had begun to annoy the town that adored her.

Out, damned euphemism! We are in a blazing moment of truth-telling that is holding the nation rapt before its TV screens. Two days after CNN's Anderson Cooper bawled out Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana for her and other politicians' "thanking each other" on the fabulous job they were all doing -- even as he'd just seen rats gnawing at a woman's body in the water behind him -- we saw the real Landrieu on ABC's "This Week."

Red-eyed and combative, she gave George Stephanopoulos an air tour of devastation and talked about the New Orleans sheriffs gripping handcuffs in their teeth as they swam to secure prisoners who would have terrorized the town further if allowed to escape. "If one person criticizes them or says one more thing," she told Stephanopoulos, "including the president of the United States . . . I might have to punch him literally."
Way to go, Mary! This is what America needs. The media-political axis has enabled a culture of talking points and spin to the point that harsh reality had nearly vanished from the national conversation. It's an index of the president's disconnect that last week he could utter the words "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job!" to FEMA Director Michael Brown. Or that he imagined he could actually suggest the administration should investigate the scandal itself. (And drag its feet on its conclusions until after the next election. We know the score now.)

In yesterday's New York Post, Dick Morris wrote that W's reputation will surely recover because rebuilding New Orleans can now become a rallying theme, a "new source of popularity. . . . A disaster like Katrina is just what a president needs to anchor his second term." The cynicism is breathtaking but also shrewd.

What's so troubling about Bush is not that he is incompetent, as many currently charge. It's that he is dismissive, unless programmed to be otherwise. His competence, as Justin Franks pointed out in "Bush on the Couch," extends only to personal self-preservation -- to winning. When the less fortunate are endangered, he reverts to the primal aphasia he learned at his mother's knee. "Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality," Barbara Bush commented from Houston on NPR Monday evening, adding, with a chilling matriarchal chuckle, "And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway. This is working very well for them."

Wow. How's that for one family's values? New York's only consolation this 9/11 is that we no longer feel so marginal as we recoil.

2005Tina Brown

Jesus Says

"You're Fired!"

I found someone who needs to hang with Bush

I was reading Maxim at lunch and they had an interview with Carl Everett, who plays for the Chicago White Sox:

Q) Let’s cut to the chase. You don’t think dinosaurs ever existed?
A) Nope. And that never will change. First of all, paleontologists don’t believe one another on their own discoveries—how can I believe in people who don’t even believe in it themselves? And biblically, there’s no mention of dinosaurs. According to the word of the Bible, Adam had dominion over all animals; according to man, dinosaurs ruled the Earth. So either God’s a liar.

Q) What about all the bones they’ve found?
A) You can make bones in the lab nowadays. And every year they come out with a different dinosaur movie, so does that mean that that dinosaur existed? A lot of things are being made that you would never see walk on this Earth.

Q) But why would people make this stuff up?
A) Why would they say a lot of things that aren’t real? That’s the thing—no one things for themselves. If everybody would thing logically, then they would come to their own conclusions. That’s what I do.

First of all I don’t think he knows the definition of “logically.” Second, I had to stop reading for fear of having an aneurism.

Cut It Off

Another disgusting religious practice.
By Christopher Hitchens

I can never read the name "Michael Bloomberg" without an automatic free-association that flashes up in my mind. "Little putz," is what my internal prompter always cues to me. Obviously this and other intuitions must be prompted by whatever grand intelligence originally designed me, because here's what I read on page B5 of the New York Times on Friday, Aug. 26:

A circumcision ritual practiced by some Orthodox Jews has alarmed city health officials, who say it may have led to three cases of herpes—one of them fatal—in infants. … The practice is known as oral suction, or in Hebrew, metzitzah b'peh: after removing the foreskin of the penis, the practitioner, or mohel, sucks the blood from the wound to clean it.

The continuing scandal of this practice, which most Jews abandoned many years ago, is newly illustrated by the death of one little boy from type-1 herpes, and the infection of two others, in Staten Island and Brooklyn, after they had been subjected to this ritual by the same mohel. Let's be clear what's involved here. The Times refers to an article published last year in the journal Pediatrics that argued that metzitzah b'peh carries a serious health risk and is, for that reason alone, a violation of Jewish law. ("We suspect … that this entity is underreported for cultural reasons and that the studies described here are only the "tip of the iceberg" of the true incidence of the disease," the authors note). None of this should be hard to comprehend: If it risks the life or health of an infant, then no religious allegiance is or should be required for its condemnation. Q.E.D., as you might say.

What's Bloomberg got to do with this, you may be impatient to know by now. Well, the mayor of the great city where these children were deliberately exposed to infection and death has had a meeting with the Orthodox authorities who like to see this happening to small putzes, and he has expressed himself thus, on his own radio show, again as per the Times:

We're going to do a study, and make sure that everyone is safe and at the same time, it is not the government's business to tell people how to practice their religion.

Study? What study? Can't the fool get through an article by a Jewish authority in Pediatrics? For the Times reporter to add that Mayor Bloomberg's comment appeared to be designed not to "upset a group that can be a formidable voting bloc" was, in the circumstances, worse than superfluous.

Where to start with this? I could wish that Bloomberg were always so careful about keeping out of other peoples' business: He has made it legally impossible to have a cigarette and a cocktail at the same time, anywhere in the city. But I'll trade him his stupid prohibitionist ban if he states clearly that it is the government's business to protect children from religious fanatics. Female genital mutilation, for example, is quite rightly banned under federal law, and no religious exemption is, or ever should be, permitted. The Mormons were obliged to give up polygamy and forcible marriage before they, or the state of Utah, could be part of the United States. A Christian Scientist who denies urgent medical treatment to his or her children may well be hauled up for reckless endangerment, as may those whose churches teach redemption through violent corporal punishment. The First Amendment does indeed forbid any infringement of religious freedom, but it is not, as was once said, part of a suicide pact, let alone a child-abuse one.

Let's by all means hear from Rabbi David Niederman of the United Jewish Organization in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, who emerged from his meeting with Bloomberg to inform us that: "The Orthodox Jewish community will continue the practice that has been practiced for over 5,000 years. We do not change. And we will not change." You can preach it, rabbi, but you have no more right to practice it than a Muslim imam who preaches the duty of holy war has the right to put his teachings into effect. And Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer, the 57-year-old man who ministered to the three boys in question, is currently under a court order that forbids him from doing it again—pending an investigation by the health department. What "investigation?" If another man of that age were found to be slicing the foreskins of little boys and then sucking their penises and their blood, he would be in jail—one hopes—so fast that his feet wouldn't touch the ground. If he then told the court that God ordered him to do it, he would be offering precisely the defense that thousands of psychos have already made so familiar. Preach it rabbi. Preach it to the judge.

A few years ago I traveled to Calcutta with the brilliant photographer Sebastião Salgado, who has made the eradication of polio his signature cause. In 2001, there was a real chance that this childhood-wrecking and frequently lethal malady could go the way of smallpox. Only a few outposts, usually in very bad war zones like Afghanistan, had not been reported as "clear." (The two sides in the civil war in El Salvador observed a truce so that the vaccine could be safely distributed.) But some mullahs in Bengal spread the rumor that the vaccine led to impotence and diarrhea (a bad combo) and urged mothers to keep their children away from the nurses and physicians. Most Bengalis are too smart to listen to ravings like these, which exactly resemble the view of Dr. Timothy Dwight, one of America's founding divines, that vaccination against smallpox was an interference with the divine design. However, in northern Nigeria, where imams now hold state power in many provinces, the polio vaccine has been denounced as a plot "by the US and the UN [!]" to "sterilize Muslims." In consequence of this fatwa, the disease has returned to Nigeria this year and also spread back to several African countries that thought they had bidden farewell to it. Decades of patient and skillful work have been ruined, along with the lives of uncounted children.

Jewish babies exposed to herpes in New York, thousands of American children injured for life after the rape and torture they suffered at the hands of a compliant Catholic priesthood, prelates and mullahs outbidding each other in denial of AIDS … it's not just your mental health that is challenged by faith. Anyone who says that this evil deserves legal protection is exactly as guilty as the filthy old men who delight in inflicting it. What a pity that there is no hell.